When
Where
Speaker: Bryce L. Ferguson, Dartmouth College
Title: Collaboration and Competition in Multi-Agent Systems: The Consequences of Coalitions and Model Mismatch
Abstract:
With the rapid growth of communication and computation technologies, systems that once operated in isolation are now coupled into large-scale multi-agent systems, including robotic fleets and autonomous transportation networks. While this increased connectivity enables new capabilities, it also introduces fundamental challenges: the collective behavior induced by decentralized decision-making can be inefficient. This talk develops game-theoretic models for distributed control and multi-agent decision-making that quantify and shape this inefficiency. I will present recent results on the price of anarchy under structured cooperation, showing how limited coalition formation (k-strong equilibria) mediates the tradeoff between coordination complexity and system performance. These results characterize when increasing communication among agents improves efficiency, and when it introduces diminishing or even adverse returns. I will also discuss the robustness of these models to misspecification. In many settings, agents act on incorrect models of others’ objectives or behavior. We formalize this discrepancy as a game-to-real gap and show how it affects equilibrium performance. We use these to develop robust, game-theoretic model predictive controllers that produce iterative, strategic predictions in a non-cooperative multi-agent environment. This perspective highlights the importance of accounting for modeling error in the design and analysis of multi-agent systems.