TRIDENT: Breaking the Hybrid-Safety-Physics Coupling for Provably Safe Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
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Abstract (arXiv)
Safe coordination in networked cyber-physical systems forces learning algorithms to simultaneously handle hybrid discrete-continuous actions, hard training-time safety constraints, and physics-governed dynamics. We show that these three features form a directed cycle of biases that defeats any naive composition of off-the-shelf modules, and formalize this as a three-way coupling lemma. We then introduce TRIDENT, the first MARL framework whose three components are co-designed to cancel each leak: a Richardson-Romberg gradient correction reducing Gumbel-Softmax bias from O(tau) to O(tau^2), a Lyapunov-constrained sequential trust-region update enforcing per-iterate feasibility, and a physics-informed residual critic that decomposes value rather than reward. We prove an O~(1/sqrt(K)) convergence rate to a constrained Nash equilibrium and an O(sqrt(K)) cumulative-violation bound. On multi-UAV mobile-edge computing, autonomous intersection management, and a hybrid SMAC variant, TRIDENT cuts training-time violations by 95.5% over MADDPG and 76.3% over MACPO, while improving reward by 13.5% over the strongest unconstrained baseline.
Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 25 of its 42 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Jun 2026.
Builds on
25 of 42 references.
References · 25
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13 more
- 2021Global Convergence of Multi-Agent Policy Gradient in Markov Potential Gamescited by 93
- 2021Safe Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning via Shieldingcited by 61
- 2019Hybrid Actor-Critic Reinforcement Learning in Parameterized Action Spacecited by 54
- 2019Reducing Overestimation Bias in Multi-Agent Domains Using Double Centralized Criticscited by 47
- 2020Rao-Blackwellizing the Straight-Through Gumbel-Softmax Gradient Estimatorcited by 37
- 2021Multi-Agent Constrained Policy Optimisationcited by 35
- 2019Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Discrete-Continuous Hybrid Action Spacescited by 16
- 2020Safe reinforcement learning for probabilistic reachability and safety specifications: A Lyapunov-based approachcited by 13
- 2023Physics-Regulated Deep Reinforcement Learning: Invariant Embeddingscited by 10
- 2025SynPo: Boosting Training-Free Few-Shot Medical Segmentation via High-Quality Negative Promptscited by 9
- 2026ARGUS: Stacked Multi-View Identity Mosaic Injection for Subject-Preserving Video Generationcited by 7
- 2024Safe Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Convergence to Generalized Nash Equilibriumcited by 6
- 2026Decoupling Semantics from Distortions: Multi-Scale Two-Stream Vision-Language Alignment for AI-Generated Image Quality Assessmentcited by 4
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.
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