In recent work, we utilized convergent cross mapping (CCM) to quantify coordination in a multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) paradigm by measuring causal influence between pairs of agents in a joint task. CCM was originally developed to detect causal influences within ecological systems, and as we previously demonstrated, it can be used to measure causal dependencies between pairs of time-series data. While this work has provided important insight into the coordination between 2 teammates, it is not clear how such coordination scales with the number of agents working together with a shared goal. Within a predator-prey pursuit environment, the current study investigates the influence that an incremental increase in number of predator agents has on the inherently causal relationship between predators working together to pursue a single prey. We hypothesize that averaged CCM values will decrease with increasing number of predators due to a redistribution of coordination across all predator agents. This work provides a quantitative assessment for the fundamental influence that number of cooperative agents has on the causal relationship between agents working together on a joint task, and insight into coordinated group behaviors.

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D. E. Asher, S. L. Barton, E. Zaroukian, and N. R. Waytowich, "Effect of cooperative team size on coordination in adaptive multi-agent systems," Proc. SPIE 11006, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Multi-Domain Operations Applications, 110060Z (Presented at SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing: April 17, 2019; Published: 10 May 2019); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2518626.