Introduction to PettingZoo

Created on October 12, 2023

2023   ·   reinforcement-learning deep-learning MARL tutorial english series   ·   education

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This work has been translated from Korean to English using Claude 4.5 Sonnet.

PettingZoo Documentation

Brief Introduction to PettingZoo

PettingZoo is a Python library that facilitates General Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) simulations.

PettingZoo consists of two main APIs:

  • AEC API: Helps implement environments with turns between agents, similar to board games.
    • Environments with turns are called Agent Environment Cycle (AEC) environments.
  • Parallel API: All agents act simultaneously within a single time step.
    • These are called Parallel environments, referring to parallel/concurrent execution.

There exist AEC-to-Parallel and Parallel-to-AEC converters that allow transformation between the two APIs. However, when developing for the first time, it’s recommended to focus on one API without worrying too much about conversion.