CoGrid & the Multi-User Gymnasium: A framework for multi-agent experimentation

Abstract The increasing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in everyday life brings with it new challenges and questions regarding how humans interact with autonomous agents. Multi-agent experiments, where humans and AI act together, can offer important opportunities to study social decision-making, but there is a lack of accessible tooling available to researchers to run such experiments. We introduce two tools designed to reduce these barriers. The first, CoGrid , is a multi-agent grid-based simulation library with dual NumPy and JAX backends. The second, Multi-User Gymnasium ( MUG ), translates such simulation environments directly into interactive web-based experiments. MUG supports interactions with arbitrary numbers of humans and AI, utilizing either server-authoritative or peer-to-peer networking with rollback netcode to account for latency. Together, these tools can enable researchers to deploy studies of human–AI interaction, facilitating inquiry into core questions of psychology, cognition, and decision-making, and their relationship to human–AI interaction. Both tools are open source and available to the broader research community. Documentation and source code is available at {}. This paper details the functionality of these tools and presents several case studies to illustrate their utility in human–AI multi-agent experimentation.

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Publication Details

Journal
Behavior Research Methods
Published
2026-09-21
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-026-03078-x
Primary Topic
Social Robot Interaction and HRI
Type
article
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article

CoGrid & the Multi-User Gymnasium: A framework for multi-agent experimentation

Chase McDonald, Cleotilde Gonzalez
Behavior Research Methods
Social Robot Interaction and HRI
article

CoGrid & the Multi-User Gymnasium: A framework for multi-agent experimentation

Chase McDonald, Cleotilde Gonzalez
article en

Abstract

Abstract The increasing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in everyday life brings with it new challenges and questions regarding how humans interact with autonomous agents. Multi-agent experiments, where humans and AI act together, can offer important opportunities to study social decision-making, but there is a lack of accessible tooling available to researchers to run such experiments. We introduce two tools designed to reduce these barriers. The first, CoGrid , is a multi-agent grid-based simulation library with dual NumPy and JAX backends. The second, Multi-User Gymnasium ( MUG ), translates such simulation environments directly into interactive web-based experiments. MUG supports interactions with arbitrary numbers of humans and AI, utilizing either server-authoritative or peer-to-peer networking with rollback netcode to account for latency. Together, these tools can enable researchers to deploy studies of human–AI interaction, facilitating inquiry into core questions of psychology, cognition, and decision-making, and their relationship to human–AI interaction. Both tools are open source and available to the broader research community. Documentation and source code is available at {}. This paper details the functionality of these tools and presents several case studies to illustrate their utility in human–AI multi-agent experimentation.

Behavior Research MethodsVol. 58(11)
Decision Sciences (United States) (US), Carnegie Mellon University (US)
Peace, Justice and strong institutions
Openalex Percentile: Top 67%
Social Robot Interaction and HRI
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CoGrid & the Multi-User Gymnasium: A framework for multi-agent experimentation — Chase McDonald, Cleotilde Gonzalez · Behavior Research Methods (2026) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS