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2026-11-06

arXiv cs.AI13:00

Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning via Epigraph-Form Guided Exploration

arXiv:2611.07066v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Discovering cooperative behavior in multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) is challenging due to the combinatorial complexity of joint state-action spaces, which hinders the emergence of coordinated behaviors from trial-and-error alone. Intrinsic rewards are often used to aid discovery, but naively combining them with team objectives can distort the learning signal, compromising task performance. In this paper, we propose EFXPLORER, a constrained exploration framework that maximizes exploration objectives subject to a constraint that preserves established task performance. We solve the resulting problem using an epigraph reformulation that introduces adaptive exploration budgets. This approach separates intrinsic rewards from task objectives and regulates exploration through task feasibility. To further encourage diverse and temporally extended exploration, we incorporate a successor distance-based intrinsic reward that captures long-horizon dependencies. Empirically, our method outperforms strong baselines and induces novel cooperative strategies across SMAX, VMAS, and MPE benchmark suites.

arXiv cs.LG13:00

Finite-Time Convergence and Regret Guarantees for Neural Reinforcement Learning in POMDPs

arXiv:2611.07069v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) in Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) is computationally challenging due to the curse of long-range dependence on history. Fortunately, recent studies have shown that a range of POMDPs that satisfy the filter stability assumption can be well approximated by a superstate Markov Decision Process (MDP) based on a truncated history in a finite-memory window, with a value gap that decays with the window length. However, existing finite-time convergence analyses on such superstate MDP surrogates are either limited to over-simplified linear function approximation or rely on an i.i.d. sampling oracle that is violated by POMDP trajectories, both of which severely limit the applicability of these theoretical results in practice. This motivates us to bridge the gap by investigating RL in POMDPs with nonlinear neural value function approximation. Our main contributions are threefold: i) We first establish a new finite-state MDP point-wise approximation error bound, which lays the foundation for our RL algorithm design and analysis in POMDPs; ii) By applying Temporal-Difference (TD) learning to POMDP-generated superstate transitions and targeting the Bellman fixed point of the superstate MDP, we prove a finite-time critic error bound with nonlinear neural value function approximation; and iii) By combining the neural critic function approximation error bound with the policy mirror descent framework, we obtain a finite-time sublinear regret against the optimal POMDP value. To the best of our knowledge, such a finite-time sublinear regret based on neural function approximation is the first in the literature for finite-memory POMDPs. Our numerical experiments also verify our theoretical results.

2026-10-27

arXiv cs.CV12:00

EKT-Router: Expert-Evidence Alignment for Embodied Vision-Language Models

arXiv:2610.33044v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Embodied vision-language models must answer questions from partial, evolving observations. Their success depends on both the reasoning capability selected and the evidence available to it. Expert routers adapt internal computation, while tool-augmented systems acquire external evidence; choosing these independently can leave a suitable expert without the evidence it needs. We introduce EKT-Router, a bounded framework that jointly selects a capability expert, optional knowledge, and perceptual tools. Outcome-derived signatures represent the overlapping strengths of General, Spatial Reasoning, and Spatiotemporal experts. A joint utility scores complete expert-evidence routes under a call budget. After acquisition, a packet verifier admits valid

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2026-10-26

arXiv cs.AI12:00

Don't Forget What You Just Learned: Self-Directed Repair Turns Agent Mistakes Into Lasting Lessons

arXiv:2610.31846v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Intelligent agents should learn from their mistakes so that experience leads to continuous improvement. Yet today's agents recover from a mistake only temporarily: in-context reflections are easily forgotten across sessions and compete for limited context, while full-parameter fine-tuning is expensive and can interfere with existing capabilities. We introduce Self-Direction, a mechanism for agents to learn from mistakes that combines the benefits of temporary in-context retries and policy updates. When an agent fails a task, it reflects on its own trajectory in order to extract a lesson and immediately distills it into a lightweight low-rank adapter. By keeping the original weights frozen, Self-Direction prevents adapter training from overwri

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