Heterogeneous MARL

MARL: Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

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Overview

Heterogeneous multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) studies coordination when agents differ in capabilities, goals, sensors, or dynamics, as in robot teams, traffic, and network control. Methods include role-conditioned and hierarchical policies, communication and graph-attention architectures, heterogeneous-agent policy optimization such as HAPPO and HATRPO, and scalable approaches based on mean fields or federated learning. Researchers evaluate these methods in settings including Isaac Lab robotics, CybORG cyber defense, and cooperative resource-allocation tasks, often measuring coordination, transfer, fairness, and constraint satisfaction. A central challenge is balancing shared learning and efficient coordination against the need for agent-specific policies that remain robust under changing teammates and environments.

Latest papers

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30 papers6 papers in the last four weeks, up 50% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. HA-DiPO: Diffusion Policy Optimization for Heterogeneous Cooperative Transport

    Oct 24, 2026Xuebin Li, Jinpeng Xiao, Zong Chen +4Multi-Robot Cargo TransportationCooperative MARL

    School of Mathematics, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China · State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China · Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

  2. JaxMARL-BC: Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Macroeconomic Modelling, in Seconds

    Oct 20, 2026Daniele Montagnani, Andrea Coletta, Antonietta Mira +1Multi-Agent Reinforcement LearningReinforcement Learning

    Università di Pavia Italy · USI Lugano Switzerland · Banca d’Italia† Italy +1

  3. Decentralized LLM Workflows via Sequential Auctions

    Oct 15, 2026Ian Gemp, Shubhendu Trivedi, Adam Fisch +7Agentic WorkflowsAutomated Bidding

    Google DeepMind · Google Research · University of Waterloo

  4. SHRED: Self-Play for Heterogeneous Road-Users without Expert Demonstrations

    Oct 14, 2026Wei-Jer Chang, Zhouchonghao Wu, Akshay Rangesh +3Self-Play RLAutonomous Driving Simulation

    Applied Intuition · University of California, Berkeley

  5. On Symmetry for Characterizing Agent Heterogeneity in Multi-Agent Systems

    Oct 13, 2026Jianhong Wang, Jonathan LawryPartially Observable Stochastic GamesMulti-Agent Systems

    INFORMED-AI Hub, University of Bristol · School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology, University of Bristol

  6. MARL-BattleGrounds: A Novel JAX-native Benchmark for Heterogeneous and Competitive Multi-agent RL

    Oct 10, 2026Ulixes Tariq Hawili, Subramanian Ramamoorthy, Yoann Altmann +1RL BenchmarksMulti-Agent Reinforcement Learning

    School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom · School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom · School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

  7. VISTA: An Attention-Based Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Architecture for Space Situational Awareness Sensor Tasking

    Sep 20, 2026Miguel Leiva-Vélez, Adalberto Claudio Quiros, Nicolas Gaston Rozado +2Active SensingSpace Situational Awareness

    ETSIAE-School of Aeronautics, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain · Indra Sistemas S.A., Spain · Department of Computer Systems Engineering, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain

  8. Agentic AI Networking for Heterogeneous Unmanned Aerial Systems in Low-Altitude Wireless Networks

    Sep 17, 2026Nguyen Duc Minh Quang, Chang Liu, Shuangyang Li +1LLM-Guided RLWireless Communications

    School of Computing, Engineering, and Mathematical Sciences, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia · Chair of Communications and Information Theory, Technical University of Berlin, 10623 Berlin, Germany · School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

  9. Curriculum-Based Adversarial Heterogeneous Agent Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Quad-Copter Landing in Maritime Settings

    Sep 11, 2026Allan Minh-Tam Nguyen, Sree Showrya Kotala, Stefan Banioi-Crijman +2Adversarial TrainingAerial Robotics

    Department of Advanced Computing Sciences, Maastricht University, Minderbroedersberg 4-6, 6211 LK Maastricht, Netherlands

  10. A Schema Bounded Language Model for Refining Robot Policies Without Destabilizing Local Learning

    Sep 4, 2026Chongwen Dong, Mithun Paul Saint-Germain, Pinjari Asif +1Robot Policy LearningRobot Policy Adaptation

    Department of Mechanical Engineering Northern Arizona University 15600 S. McConnell Dr., Flagstaff, AZ 86011 · School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems Northern Arizona University 1295 Knoles Dr., Flagstaff, AZ 86011 · Helen and John C. Hartmann Department of Electrical Engineering and School of Applied Engineering and Technology New Jersey Institute of Technology 323 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Newark, NJ 07102

  11. BVR Sim: An Open and High-Throughput Environment for Heterogeneous Air-Combat Reinforcement Learning

    Aug 26, 2026Haocheng Sun, Mulai TanRL BenchmarksReinforcement Learning

    Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications · Air Force Engineering University · Aviation Engineering School, Air Force Engineering University Xi’an 710038, China

  12. Co-RL: Unsupervised Reasoning Emerges from Diverse Cohort in Multi-agent RL

    Aug 18, 2026Yunhao Yang, Yuexin Bian, Yunjie Tian +6RL for Language Model ReasoningReinforcement Learning

    Johns Hopkins University · UC San Diego · Independent Researcher +1

  13. OGR-MARL: Option-Guided Residual Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Heterogeneous USV Cooperative Pursuit in Constrained Port Waterways

    Aug 13, 2026Jiayang Mao, Lanfeng Wang, Zhao-Han PengReinforcement LearningMobile Robotics

  14. History Matters: Meta-policy Delegation with Heterogeneous Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning

    Aug 4, 2026Ziqing Lu, Avinash Reddy Mudireddy, Sarra Alqahtani +1Multi-Agent SystemsCooperative MARL

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Iowa · Department of Computer Science Wake Forest University

  15. Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Radio Resource Management under Coupled Finite-Horizon Constraints

    Aug 3, 2026Yeonseo Jeong, Wonhyeok Ko, Sungweon Hong +1Stochastic OptimizationFair Resource Allocation

    Department of Electronic Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea · Department of AI-Semiconductor, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea

  16. Heterogeneous Policy Networks for Composite Robot Team Communication and Coordination

    Jun 18, 2026Esmaeil Seraj, Rohan Paleja, Luis Pimentel +7Multi-Robot CoordinationMulti-Agent Communication

    Georgia Institute of Technology · Carnegie Mellon University · Sandia National Laboratories

  17. αα-fair heterogeneous agent reinforcement learning

    Jun 11, 2026Yao-hua Franck Xu, Tayeb Lemlouma, Jean-Marie Bonnin +1Algorithmic FairnessPolicy Optimization

    Orange Innov Lannion, France · IRISA Université de Rennes Lannion, France · IRISA IMT Atlantique Rennes, France

  18. A GPU-Parallel Framework for Heterogeneous Multi-Task Reinforcement Learning

    Jun 2, 2026Rui Zhang, Qiwei Wu, Zhengyu Zhang +7Robotic RLLearning from Demonstration

    NVIDIA · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)

  19. Collaborative Yet Personalized Policy Training: Single-Timescale Federated Actor-Critic

    May 14, 2026Leo Muxing Wang, Pengkun Yang, Lili SuFederated RLActor-Critic Methods

    Northeastern University · Tsinghua University

  20. Experience Sharing in Mutual Reinforcement Learning for Heterogeneous Language Models

    May 8, 2026Xiaoze Liu, Dhananjay Ram, Yuting Zhang +3RL for Language ModelsReinforcement Learning

    1Purdue University · *Work done during an internship at Amazon. · 2AWS Agentic AI

  21. DC-Ada: Reward-Only Decentralized Sensor Adaptation for Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Teams

    Apr 5, 2026Saad AlqithamiGradient-Free OptimizationRobot Policy Adaptation

    Department of Computer Science, Al-Baha University, Albaha 65779 Saudi Arabia

  22. Collaborative Task and Path Planning for Heterogeneous Robotic Teams using Multi-Agent PPO

    Apr 1, 2026Matthias Rubio, Julia Richter, Hendrik Kolvenbach +1Multi-Robot Task AllocationMulti-Robot Motion Planning

    Robotic Systems Lab (RSL), ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

  23. Heterogeneous Self-Play for Realistic Highway Traffic Simulation

    Mar 31, 2026Jinkai Qiu, Alessandro Saviolo, Chaojie Wang +2Autonomous Driving SimulationAutonomous Driving Scenario Generation

    PlusAI · University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

  24. Learning Communication Between Heterogeneous Agents in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Cyber Defence

    Mar 17, 2026Alex Popa, Adrian Taylor, Ranwa Al MallahAutonomous Cyber DefenseHeterogeneous MARL

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston Ontario, Canada · Defence Research and Development Canada, Ottawa Ontario, Canada · Department of Computer Engineering and Software Engineering, Polytechnique Montr´eal, Montr´eal Qu´ebec, Canada

  25. EcoFair-CH-MARL: Scalable Constrained Hierarchical Multi-Agent RL with Real-Time Emission Budgets and Fairness Guarantees

    Mar 15, 2026Saad AlqithamiConstrained MARLMulti-Agent Reinforcement Learning

    Computer Science Department, Al-Baha University, Albaha 65779, Saudi Arabia

  26. Learning When to Cooperate Under Heterogeneous Goals

    Mar 7, 2026Max Taylor-Davies, Neil Bramley, Christopher G. LucasMulti-Agent CollaborationAd Hoc Teamwork

    School of Informatics, The University of Edinburgh · Department of Psychology, The University of Edinburgh

  27. HALO: Learning Human-Robot Collaboration via Heterogeneous-Agent Lyapunov Policy Optimization

    Mar 4, 2026Hao Zhang, Yaru Niu, Yikai Wang +2Decentralized MARLHeterogeneous MARL

    ETAIC Lab, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, USA · Safe AI Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, USA.

  28. Heterogeneous Agent Collaborative Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 3, 2026Zhixia Zhang, Zixuan Huang, Gongxun Li +10Multi-Agent CollaborationHeterogeneous MARL

    Beihang University · Bytedance China · Apple +2

  29. Graphon Mean-Field Subsampling for Cooperative Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

    Feb 18, 2026Emile Anand, Richard Hoffmann, Sarah Liaw +1Reinforcement LearningCooperative MARL

    School of Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA · Computing and Mathematical Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA · Kempner Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

  30. HARL-A: An Extensible Benchmark Framework for Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Adversarial Reinforcement Learning in IsaacLab

    Sep 26, 2025Isaac Peterson, Christopher Allred, Jacob Morrey +1RL BenchmarksAdversarial MARL

    Utah State University · US DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory