# ARMATA: Auto-Regressive Multi-Agent Task Assignment

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.04225 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.04225/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 19 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 May 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [OpenAI Gym](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.01540/) (2016)
- [Multi-Agent Actor-Critic for Mixed Cooperative-Competitive Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02275/) (2017)
- [Pointer Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.03134/) (2015)
- [Attention, Learn to Solve Routing Problems!](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.08475/) (2018)
- [Machine Learning for Combinatorial Optimization: a Methodological Tour d'Horizon](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.06128/) (2018)
- [Neural Combinatorial Optimization with Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.09940/) (2016)
- [POMO: Policy Optimization with Multiple Optima for Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.16011/) (2020)
- [Neural Combinatorial Optimization with Heavy Decoder: Toward Large Scale Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07985/) (2023)
- [BQ-NCO: Bisimulation Quotienting for Efficient Neural Combinatorial Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.03313/) (2023)
- [Learning Combinatorial Optimization on Graphs: A Survey with Applications to Networking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11081/) (2020)
- [Integrated Task Assignment and Path Planning for Capacitated Multi-Agent Pickup and Delivery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14891/) (2021)
- [Extending the OpenAI Gym for robotics: a toolkit for reinforcement learning using ROS and Gazebo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.05742/) (2016)
- [Dynamic Multi-Robot Task Allocation under Uncertainty and Temporal Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.13109/) (2020)
- [gym-gazebo2, a toolkit for reinforcement learning using ROS 2 and Gazebo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.06278/) (2019)
- [PARCO: Parallel AutoRegressive Models for Multi-Agent Combinatorial Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.03811/) (2024)
- [Graph-based Decentralized Task Allocation for Multi-Robot Target Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.08896/) (2023)
- [Prompt Learning for Generalized Vehicle Routing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12262/) (2024)
- [MAGNNET: Multi-Agent Graph Neural Network-based Efficient Task Allocation for Autonomous Vehicles with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02311/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Coordinating multi-agent systems over spatially distributed areas requires solving a complex hierarchical problem: first distributing areas among agents (allocation) and subsequently determining the optimal visitation order (routing). Existing methods typically decouple these stages ignoring inter-stage dependencies or rely on decentralized heuristics that lack global context. In this work, we propose a centralized, fully end-to-end auto-regressive framework that jointly generates allocation decisions and routing sequences. The core contribution of our approach is a multi-stage decoding mechanism that unifies high-level allocation and low-level routing in a single autoregressive pass while maintaining a centralized global state. This enables the model to implicitly balance workload distribution with routing efficiency, avoiding local optima common in decentralized methods. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms diverse baselines, achieving up to a 20% improvement in solution quality over industrial solvers such as Google OR-Tools, IBM CPLEX, and LKH-3, while reducing computation time from hours to seconds.