Before We Act: Learning Action-Conditioned Team-Response Beliefs for Decentralized Multi-Robot Manipulation

arXiv:2610.14551v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In multi-robot manipulation, an action's value depends on how teammates respond. We present method{} (Cooperative Action--Response Belief Estimation), a framework for learning team-response beliefs from local history. A predictive belief encoder represents the interaction and conditions a nominal action. Matched reactive and replay continuations separate each candidate's direct advantage from the utility contributed by teammate adaptation. A candidate-conditioned readout learns this response distribution alongside total advantage, and calibrated selection chooses an alternative or retains the nominal action. Our analysis characterizes when response changes the preferred action and how prediction and source errors limit the recoverable gain. With the representation, proposals, and data fixed, explicit response supervision improves candidate ranking and reduces selection regret relative to learning the same information through branch utilities. The benefit is concentrated in decisions where teammate adaptation changes the preferred action. Across RoboFactory, the MARS Control Track, and physical collaboration tasks, CARE achieves the highest average success among the evaluated policies, combining a capable nominal policy with selective coordination adjustments. Together, these results show that CARE turns predictions of teammate adaptation into effective decentralized action selection. Project page: https://jeong-zju.github.io/care/.

Source: arXiv cs.RO | 2026-10-14