mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Multi-Agent Coordination across Diverse Applications: A Survey

arXiv 2502.14743 ↗First posted 20 Feb 2025cs.MA cs.AIcited by 37

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks

Abstract (arXiv)

Multi-agent coordination studies the underlying mechanism enabling the trending spread of diverse multi-agent systems (MAS) and has received increasing attention, driven by the expansion of emerging applications and rapid AI advances. This survey outlines the current state of coordination research across applications through a unified understanding that answers four fundamental coordination questions: (1) what is coordination; (2) why coordination; (3) who to coordinate with; and (4) how to coordinate. Our purpose is to explore existing ideas and expertise in coordination and their connections across diverse applications, while identifying and highlighting emerging and promising research directions. First, general coordination problems that are essential to varied applications are identified and analyzed. Second, a number of MAS applications are surveyed, ranging from widely studied domains, e.g., search and rescue, warehouse automation and logistics, and transportation systems, to emerging fields including humanoid and anthropomorphic robots, satellite systems, and large language models (LLMs). Finally, open challenges about the scalability, heterogeneity, and learning mechanisms of MAS are analyzed and discussed. In particular, we identify the hybridization of hierarchical and decentralized coordination, human-MAS coordination, and LLM-based MAS as promising future directions.

Key facts. Cited by 37 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 35 of its 148 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 20 Feb 2025.

Builds on

35 of 148 references.

Closest ancestors · 1

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023CAMEL: Communicative Agents for "Mind" Exploration of Large Language Model Society31 Mar

Other references · 34

  1. 2014Neural Machine Translation by Jointly Learning to Align and Translatecited by 4,530
  2. 2017Multi-Agent Actor-Critic for Mixed Cooperative-Competitive Environmentscited by 1,519
  3. 2017Counterfactual Multi-Agent Policy Gradientscited by 733
  4. 2018Learning Dexterous In-Hand Manipulationcited by 643
  5. 2016Learning to Communicate with Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 561
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  11. 2018TarMAC: Targeted Multi-Agent Communicationcited by 201
  12. 2021NEAT: Neural Attention Fields for End-to-End Autonomous Drivingcited by 174
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  1. 2022Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning is a Sequence Modeling Problemcited by 153
  2. 2017Network Topology and Communication-Computation Tradeoffs in Decentralized Optimizationcited by 119
  3. 2018Learning when to Communicate at Scale in Multiagent Cooperative and Competitive Taskscited by 114
  4. 2023Mindstorms in Natural Language-Based Societies of Mindcited by 105
  5. 2017Multiagent Bidirectionally-Coordinated Nets: Emergence of Human-level Coordination in Learning to Play StarCraft Combat Gamescited by 93
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  8. 2019Learning to Schedule Communication in Multi-agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 89
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  12. 2017VAIN: Attentional Multi-agent Predictive Modelingcited by 51
  13. 2023Welfare Diplomacy: Benchmarking Language Model Cooperationcited by 43
  14. 2019Failure-Scenario Maker for Rule-Based Agent using Multi-agent Adversarial Reinforcement Learning and its Application to Autonomous Drivingcited by 36
  15. 2020Satellite Communications in the New Space Era: A Survey and Future Challengescited by 36
  16. 2021Applications of Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning in Future Internet: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 34
  17. 2023Teleoperation of Humanoid Robots: A Surveycited by 32
  18. 2016Vehicle Routing Problems for Drone Deliverycited by 23
  19. 2017Event-Triggered Communication and Control of Networked Systems for Multi-Agent Consensuscited by 5
  20. 2022Toward multi-target self-organizing pursuit in a partially observable Markov gamecited by 2
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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 16; 2026: 21.

37 papers.

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  1. 2025A Survey of Context Engineering for Large Language Modelscited by 120
  2. 2025Measuring Agents in Productioncited by 35
  3. 2025AutoData: A Multi-Agent System for Open Web Data Collectioncited by 25
  4. 2025Rethinking the Reliability of Multi-agent System: A Perspective from Byzantine Fault Tolerancecited by 16
  5. 2026Beyond Max Tokens: Stealthy Resource Amplification via Tool Calling Chains in LLM Agentscited by 14
  6. 2026Clawdrain: Exploiting Tool-Calling Chains for Stealthy Token Exhaustion in OpenClaw Agentscited by 14
  7. 2025From Glue-Code to Protocols: A Critical Analysis of A2A and MCP Integration for Scalable Agent Systemscited by 12
  8. 2026Autonomous Agents on Blockchains: Standards, Execution Models, and Trust Boundariescited by 12
  9. 2026The Five Ws of Multi-Agent Communication: Who Talks to Whom, When, What, and Why -- A Survey from MARL to Emergent Language and LLMscited by 10
  10. 2026MegaFlow: Large-Scale Distributed Orchestration System for the Agentic Eracited by 9
  11. 2025A Taxonomy of Hierarchical Multi-Agent Systems: Design Patterns, Coordination Mechanisms, and Industrial Applicationscited by 8
  12. 2026Multi-User Large Language Model Agentscited by 6
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  1. 2026HiRAS: A Hierarchical Multi-Agent Framework for Paper-to-Code Generation and Executioncited by 5
  2. 2025InfiAgent: Self-Evolving Pyramid Agent Framework for Infinite Scenarioscited by 4
  3. 2025Detecting Perspective Shifts in Multi-agent Systemscited by 4
  4. 2025Can LLM Agents Solve Collaborative Tasks? A Study on Urgency-Aware Planning and Coordinationcited by 3
  5. 2026An Empirical Study of Multi-Agent Collaboration for Automated Researchcited by 3
  6. 2025An Auditable Agent Platform For Automated Molecular Optimisationcited by 2
  7. 2026How to Steer Your Multi-Agent System: Human-LLM Collaborative Planningcited by 2
  8. 2025Decentralized Multi-Agent Goal Assignment for Path Planning using Large Language Modelscited by 1
  9. 2025AnimAgents: Coordinating Multi-Stage Animation Pre-Production with Human-Multi-Agent Collaborationcited by 1
  10. 2026Self-Evolving Coordination Protocol in Multi-Agent AI Systems: An Exploratory Systems Feasibility Studycited by 1
  11. 2026Weak-Link Optimization for Multi-Agent Reasoning and Collaborationcited by 1
  12. 2026Harness-MU: A Safe, Governed, and Effective Harness for Multi-User LLM Agentscited by 1
  13. 2026Who Broke the System? Failure Localization in LLM-Based Multi-Agent Systemscited by 1
  14. 2025Intelligent System of Emergent Knowledge: A Coordination Fabric for Billions of Mindscited by 0
  15. 2025Intelligent Design 4.0: Paradigm Evolution Toward the Agentic AI Eracited by 0
  16. 2025MAPF-World: Action World Model for Multi-Agent Path Findingcited by 0
  17. 2025MAC: A Multi-Agent Framework for Interactive User Clarification in Multi-turn Conversationscited by 0
  18. 2026Logic-Driven Semantic Communication for Resilient Multi-Agent Systemscited by 0
  19. 2026OrchMAS: Orchestrated Reasoning with Multi Collaborative Heterogeneous Scientific Expert Structured Agentscited by 0
  20. 2026Story2Proposal: A Scaffold for Structured Scientific Paper Writingcited by 0
  21. 2026Multi-Agent Systems: From Classical Paradigms to Large Foundation Model-Enabled Futurescited by 0
  22. 2026When Agents Handle Secrets: A Survey of Confidential Computing for Agentic AIcited by 0
  23. 2026When Does Hierarchy Help? Benchmarking Agent Coordination in Event-Driven Industrial Schedulingcited by 0
  24. 2026Clarus: Coordinating Autonomous Research Agents toward Web-Scale Scientific Collaborationcited by 0
  25. 2026Spine-Branch Coordination for Multi-agent Computer Usecited by 0

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