The Study of Crash-Tolerant, Multi-Agent Offensive and Defensive Games Using Deep Reinforcement Learning

Abstract

In the multi-agent offensive and defensive game (ODG), each agent achieves its goal by cooperating or competing with other agents. The multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (MADRL) method is applied in similar scenarios to help agents make decisions. In various situations, the agents of both sides may crash due to collisions. However, the existing algorithms cannot deal with the situation where the number of agents reduces. Based on the multi-agent deep deterministic policy gradient (MADDPG) algorithm, we study a method to deal with a reduction in the number of agents in the training process without changing the structure of the neural network (NN), which is called the frozen agent method for the MADDPG (FA-MADDPG) algorithm. In addition, we design a distance–collision reward function to help agents learn strategies better. Through the experiments in four scenarios with different numbers of agents, it is verified that the algorithm we proposed can not only successfully deal with the problem of agent number reduction in the training stage but also show better performance and higher efficiency than the MADDPG algorithm in simulation.