# Hamilton's Rule for Enabling Altruism in Multi-Agent Systems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.09841 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09841/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 14 May 2025.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Learning Altruistic Collaboration in Heterogeneous Multi-Team Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.21723/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper explores the application of Hamilton's rule to altruistic decision-making in multi-agent systems. Inspired by biological altruism, we introduce a framework that evaluates when individual agents should incur costs to benefit their neighbors. By adapting Hamilton's rule, we define agent ``fitness" in terms of task productivity rather than genetic survival. We formalize altruistic decision-making through a graph-based model of multi-agent interactions and propose a solution using collaborative control Lyapunov functions. The approach ensures that altruistic behaviors contribute to the collective goal-reaching efficiency of the system. We illustrate this framework on a multi-agent way-point navigation problem, where we show through simulation how agent importance levels influence altruistic decision-making, leading to improved coordination in navigation tasks.