# Partially Observable Zero-shot coordination by Predicting Intention of Partner

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.08142 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.08142/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 4 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Oct 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Adversarial Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.05644/) (2015)
- [Melting Pot 2.0](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13746/) (2022)
- [OvercookedV2: Rethinking Overcooked for Zero-Shot Coordination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17821/) (2025)
- [Adaptively Coordinating with Novel Partners via Learned Latent Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.12754/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Zero-shot coordination in embodied settings requires acting while the partner is intermittently out of view, leaving existing methods with ambiguous partner representations and uncertainty over hidden partner states. We propose Predicting Intention of Partner (PIP) to jointly address these challenges. PIP uses a Joint-view VAE to distill richer training-time evidence from the union of both agents' local observations into a partner representation available from local observations alone. Partner-state Belief networks further infer the partner's hidden location and behavioral tendencies from the ego agent's interaction history. We evaluate PIP in Burrito-PO, Overcooked-PO, and a Melting Pot substrate, together with a human evaluation in Burrito-PO. PIP attains the highest mean performance among the compared methods across all three benchmarks. Human evaluation and diagnostic analyses further support coordination with unseen partners and the contributions of both components under partner occlusion.