SafeDiSTL: Decomposing Joint Constraints for Safe Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2610.13737v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Cooperative multi-agent tasks often impose constraints on a shared objective or collective safety. A team level violation cost function can measure this constraint outcome, but does not distinguish which agents' actions most strongly influence that violation. We present SafeDiSTL, a constrained multi-agent reinforcement learning framework that allows for credit assignment even with joint constraint measurements. We use Signal Temporal Logic (STL) robustness to measure episode-level violation through running-maximum cost increments. Smooth full-episode robustness and differentiable dynamics provide action sensitivities, which allocate each cost increment across agents at the same decision time. These sensitivities account for delayed effects when weighting agents' shares of each cost increment. We study the framework in cooperative payload transport, connected navigation, and networked traffic control tasks. SafeDiSTL achieves 1.6-5.1x the safe-success rate in transport, improves navigation safe-success by 11.1%, and delivers 50-68% more throughput in traffic when compared to constrained baselines. Results demonstrate a strong improvement of the learned policy in dealing with shared constraint while retaining the performance of unconstrained policies.

Abstract:Cooperative multi-agent tasks often impose constraints on a shared objective or collective safety. A team level violation cost function can measure this constraint outcome, but does not distinguish which agents' actions most strongly influence that violation. We present SafeDiSTL, a constrained multi-agent reinforcement learning framework that allows for credit assignment even with joint constraint measurements. We use Signal Temporal Logic (STL) robustness to measure episode-level violation through running-maximum cost increments. Smooth full-episode robustness and differentiable dynamics provide action sensitivities, which allocate each cost increment across agents at the same decision time. These sensitivities account for delayed effects when weighting agents' shares of each cost increment. We study the framework in cooperative payload transport, connected navigation, and networked traffic control tasks. SafeDiSTL achieves 1.6-5.1x the safe-success rate in transport, improves navigation safe-success by 11.1%, and delivers 50-68% more throughput in traffic when compared to constrained baselines. Results demonstrate a strong improvement of the learned policy in dealing with shared constraint while retaining the performance of unconstrained policies.

Machine Learning (cs.LG); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)

arXiv:2610.13737 [cs.LG]

(or arXiv:2610.13737v1 [cs.LG] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.13737 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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SafeDiSTL: Decomposing Joint Constraints for Safe Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

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