aiqbench analysis
This paper introduces CoCoBench, a new benchmark designed to diagnose specific failure modes in multi-agent systems like duplicated efforts and desynchronized handoffs. By evaluating 11 multimodal large language models across four distinct coordination constructs, the study reveals that high overall task success rates often mask significant weaknesses in particular coordination types. These findings provide critical insights for researchers aiming to architect more robust agent systems capable of reliable collaborative planning.
CoCoBench: A Cooperative Coordination Benchmark for Embodied Multi-Agent Task Planning
arXiv:2608.28266v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Agent systems powered by multimodal large language models (MLLMs) have advanced rapidly in recent years, yet existing embodied-agent benchmarks still lack fine-grained diagnostics for multi-agent coordination. Most benchmarks either focus on single-agent task completion or summarize multi-agent behavior with overall task success rates, which can obscure coordination failures such as duplicated work, violations of ordering constraints, resource contention, and desynchronized handoffs. In this paper, we introduce CoCoBench, a construct-level benchmark for evaluating multi-agent embodied coordination in executable household tasks. CoCoBench contains 897 oracle-validated instances organized around four recurring coordination constructs: task allocation, sequential ordering, mutual exclusion, and handoff coordination. In addition to task success rate, CoCoBench provides construct-level scores that measure whether agents coordinate effectively. We evaluate 11 leading MLLMs across different coordination modes, observation inputs, and numbers of agents. The results show that coordination ability is highly construct-specific: strong overall performance does not imply balanced competence across different coordination types. These findings point to new directions for designing targeted model architectures and improving multi-agent coordination ability.
Abstract:Agent systems powered by multimodal large language models (MLLMs) have advanced rapidly in recent years, yet existing embodied-agent benchmarks still lack fine-grained diagnostics for multi-agent coordination. Most benchmarks either focus on single-agent task completion or summarize multi-agent behavior with overall task success rates, which can obscure coordination failures such as duplicated work, violations of ordering constraints, resource contention, and desynchronized handoffs. In this paper, we introduce CoCoBench, a construct-level benchmark for evaluating multi-agent embodied coordination in executable household tasks. CoCoBench contains 897 oracle-validated instances organized around four recurring coordination constructs: task allocation, sequential ordering, mutual exclusion, and handoff coordination. In addition to task success rate, CoCoBench provides construct-level scores that measure whether agents coordinate effectively. We evaluate 11 leading MLLMs across different coordination modes, observation inputs, and numbers of agents. The results show that coordination ability is highly construct-specific: strong overall performance does not imply balanced competence across different coordination types. These findings point to new directions for designing targeted model architectures and improving multi-agent coordination ability.
Robotics (cs.RO)
arXiv:2608.28266 [cs.RO]
(or arXiv:2608.28266v1 [cs.RO] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.28266 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 260 words
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