Diffusing to Coordinate: When Multi-Agent RL Learns to Breathe
Robots are easy to imagine as individuals. A quadruped walks. A drone flies. A warehouse arm picks. The business slide is usually kind enough to show one machine, one task, one satisfying arrow from input to output. Reality is less polite. A quadruped is not one decision-maker. It is a committee of limbs negotiating with gravity. A multi-drone system is not one policy with four propellers. It is a moving argument about timing, local perception, shared goals, and what not to crash into. A factory cell with multiple robotic agents is even worse: every local action changes the environment other agents are trying to understand. ...