Reinforcement Learning for Multi-Agent Strategy Synthesis Using Higher-Order Knowledge

Abstract: Imagine for a moment we are living in the distant future where autonomous robots are patrollingthe streets as police officers. Two such robots are chasing a robber through the city streets. Fearingthe thief might listen in to any potential transmission, both robots remain radio silent and are thuslimited to a strictly visual pursuit. Since the robots cannot see the robber the entire time, they haveto deduce the potential location of the robber. What would the best strategy be for these robots toachieve their objective? This bachelor's thesis investigated the above example by creating strategies through reinforcementlearning. The thesis also investigated the performance of the players when they have differentabilities of deduction. This was tested by creating a suitable game and corresponding reinforcementlearning algorithm and running the simulations for different degrees of knowledge. The study provedthat reinforcement learning is a viable method for strategy construction, reaching nearly guaranteedvictory for cases when the agent knows everything about the environment and a slightly lower winratio when there is uncertainty introduced. The implementation yielded only a small gain in win ratiowhen the agents could deduce even more about each other.