An Introduction to Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning and Review of its Application to Autonomous Mobility

Lukas M. Schmidt, Johanna Brosig, Axel Plinge, Bjoern M. Eskofier, Christopher Mutschler

Abstract: Many scenarios in mobility and traffic involve multiple different agents that need to cooperate to find a joint solution. Recent advances in behavioral planning use Reinforcement Learning to find effective and performant behavior strategies. However, as autonomous vehicles and vehicle-to-X communications become more mature, solutions that only utilize single, independent agents leave potential performance gains on the road. Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) is a research field aiming to find optimal solutions for multiple agents interacting with each other. This work gives an overview of the field to researchers in autonomous mobility. We first explain MARL and introduce important concepts. Then, we discuss the central paradigms that underlie MARL algorithms and give an overview of state-of-the-art methods and ideas in each paradigm. With this background, we survey applications of MARL in autonomous mobility scenarios and give an overview of existing scenarios and implementations.