Uncertainty-Aware Policy Optimization for Robust Multi-Agent Decision Making under Partial Observability

Authors

  • Erik Andersson Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, 751 05 Uppsala, Sweden
  • Johan Svensson Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, 751 05 Uppsala, Sweden
  • Lars Johansson Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, 751 05 Uppsala, Sweden

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.66238/fsrma56

Keywords:

Soft actor-critic, Uncertainty modeling, Partial observability, Multi-agent reinforcement learning, Robust decision-making

Abstract

Decision-making in partially observable environments introduces uncertainty that can degrade coordination performance. This study develops an uncertainty-aware reinforcement learning framework by integrating soft actor-critic (SAC) with entropy regularization and Bayesian value estimation. The approach explicitly models uncertainty in both state representation and reward estimation, enabling more stable policy updates. Evaluation is performed on 10,000 tasks with varying levels of observation noise and incomplete information, including negotiation and multi-stage planning scenarios. The proposed method improves success rate from 69.2% to 81.5% and reduces variance in cumulative reward by 27.4% compared to standard SAC. Additionally, calibration metrics indicate better alignment between predicted and actual outcomes. The results demonstrate that uncertainty-aware optimization enhances robustness in collaborative decision systems.

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Published

2026-04-01