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arXiv · 2506.18814

Online Multi-Agent Control with Adversarial Disturbances

Anas Barakat·John Lazarsfeld·Georgios Piliouras·Antonios Varvitsiotis
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Abstract

Online multi-agent control problems, where many agents pursue competing and time-varying objectives, are widespread in domains such as autonomous robotics, economics, and energy systems. In these settings, robustness to adversarial disturbances is critical. In this paper, we study online control in multi-agent linear dynamical systems subject to such disturbances. In contrast to most prior work in multi-agent control, which typically assumes noiseless or stochastically perturbed dynamics, we consider an online setting where disturbances can be adversarial, and where each agent seeks to minimize its own sequence of convex losses. Under two feedback models, we analyze online gradient-based controllers with local policy updates. We prove per-agent regret bounds that are sublinear and near-optimal in the time horizon and that highlight different scalings with the number of agents. When agents' objectives are aligned, we further show that the multi-agent control problem induces a time-varying potential game for which we derive equilibrium tracking guarantees. Together, our results take a first step in bridging online control with online learning in games, establishing robust individual and collective performance guarantees in dynamic continuous-state environments.

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Anas Barakat, John Lazarsfeld, Georgios Piliouras, Antonios Varvitsiotis. 2025-09-26. Online Multi-Agent Control with Adversarial Disturbances. https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.18814

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