[2603.23722] Dual-Gated Epistemic Time-Dilation: Autonomous Compute Modulation in Asynchronous MARL

Computer Science > Multiagent Systems arXiv:2603.23722 (cs) [Submitted on 24 Mar 2026] Title:Dual-Gated Epistemic Time-Dilation: Autonomous Compute Modulation in Asynchronous MARL Authors:Igor Jankowski View a PDF of the paper titled Dual-Gated Epistemic Time-Dilation: Autonomous Compute Modulation in Asynchronous MARL, by Igor Jankowski View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:While Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) algorithms achieve unprecedented successes across complex continuous domains, their standard deployment strictly adheres to a synchronous operational paradigm. Under this paradigm, agents are universally forced to execute deep neural network inferences at every micro-frame, regardless of immediate necessity. This dense throughput acts as a fundamental barrier to physical deployment on edge-devices where thermal and metabolic budgets are highly constrained. We propose Epistemic Time-Dilation MAPPO (ETD-MAPPO), augmented with a Dual-Gated Epistemic Trigger. Instead of depending on rigid frame-skipping (macro-actions), agents autonomously modulate their execution frequency by interpreting aleatoric uncertainty (via Shannon entropy of their policy) and epistemic uncertainty (via state-value divergence in a Twin-Critic architecture). To format this, we structure the environment as a Semi-Markov Decision Process (SMDP) and build the SMDP-Aligned Asynchronous Gradient Masking Critic to ensure proper credit assignment. Empirical findings demonstrate massive impro...