62,114 research outputs found
A Generalised Solution to Distributed Consensus
Distributed consensus, the ability to reach agreement in the face of failures and asynchrony, is a fundamental primitive for constructing reliable distributed systems from unreliable components. The Paxos algorithm is synonymous with distributed consensus, yet it performs poorly in practice and is famously difficult to understand. In this paper, we re-examine the foundations of distributed consensus. We derive an abstract solution to consensus, which utilises immutable state for intuitive reasoning about safety. We prove that our abstract solution generalises over Paxos as well as the Fast Paxos and Flexible Paxos algorithms. The surprising result of this analysis is a substantial weakening to the quorum requirements of these widely studied algorithms
The PeerRank Method for Peer Assessment
We propose the PeerRank method for peer assessment. This constructs a grade
for an agent based on the grades proposed by the agents evaluating the agent.
Since the grade of an agent is a measure of their ability to grade correctly,
the PeerRank method weights grades by the grades of the grading agent. The
PeerRank method also provides an incentive for agents to grade correctly. As
the grades of an agent depend on the grades of the grading agents, and as these
grades themselves depend on the grades of other agents, we define the PeerRank
method by a fixed point equation similar to the PageRank method for ranking
web-pages. We identify some formal properties of the PeerRank method (for
example, it satisfies axioms of unanimity, no dummy, no discrimination and
symmetry), discuss some examples, compare with related work and evaluate the
performance on some synthetic data. Our results show considerable promise,
reducing the error in grade predictions by a factor of 2 or more in many cases
over the natural baseline of averaging peer grades.Comment: To appear in Proc. of ECAI 201
Event-Triggered Algorithms for Leader-Follower Consensus of Networked Euler-Lagrange Agents
This paper proposes three different distributed event-triggered control
algorithms to achieve leader-follower consensus for a network of Euler-Lagrange
agents. We firstly propose two model-independent algorithms for a subclass of
Euler-Lagrange agents without the vector of gravitational potential forces. By
model-independent, we mean that each agent can execute its algorithm with no
knowledge of the agent self-dynamics. A variable-gain algorithm is employed
when the sensing graph is undirected; algorithm parameters are selected in a
fully distributed manner with much greater flexibility compared to all previous
work concerning event-triggered consensus problems. When the sensing graph is
directed, a constant-gain algorithm is employed. The control gains must be
centrally designed to exceed several lower bounding inequalities which require
limited knowledge of bounds on the matrices describing the agent dynamics,
bounds on network topology information and bounds on the initial conditions.
When the Euler-Lagrange agents have dynamics which include the vector of
gravitational potential forces, an adaptive algorithm is proposed which
requires more information about the agent dynamics but can estimate uncertain
agent parameters.
For each algorithm, a trigger function is proposed to govern the event update
times. At each event, the controller is updated, which ensures that the control
input is piecewise constant and saves energy resources. We analyse each
controllers and trigger function and exclude Zeno behaviour. Extensive
simulations show 1) the advantages of our proposed trigger function as compared
to those in existing literature, and 2) the effectiveness of our proposed
controllers.Comment: Extended manuscript of journal submission, containing omitted proofs
and simulation
Bounded Decentralised Coordination over Multiple Objectives
We propose the bounded multi-objective max-sum algorithm (B-MOMS), the first decentralised coordination algorithm for multi-objective optimisation problems. B-MOMS extends the max-sum message-passing algorithm for decentralised coordination to compute bounded approximate solutions to multi-objective decentralised constraint optimisation problems (MO-DCOPs). Specifically, we prove the optimality of B-MOMS in acyclic constraint graphs, and derive problem dependent bounds on its approximation ratio when these graphs contain cycles. Furthermore, we empirically evaluate its performance on a multi-objective extension of the canonical graph colouring problem. In so doing, we demonstrate that, for the settings we consider, the approximation ratio never exceeds 2, and is typically less than 1.5 for less-constrained graphs. Moreover, the runtime required by B-MOMS on the problem instances we considered never exceeds 30 minutes, even for maximally constrained graphs with agents. Thus, B-MOMS brings the problem of multi-objective optimisation well within the boundaries of the limited capabilities of embedded agents
Global consensus Monte Carlo
To conduct Bayesian inference with large data sets, it is often convenient or
necessary to distribute the data across multiple machines. We consider a
likelihood function expressed as a product of terms, each associated with a
subset of the data. Inspired by global variable consensus optimisation, we
introduce an instrumental hierarchical model associating auxiliary statistical
parameters with each term, which are conditionally independent given the
top-level parameters. One of these top-level parameters controls the
unconditional strength of association between the auxiliary parameters. This
model leads to a distributed MCMC algorithm on an extended state space yielding
approximations of posterior expectations. A trade-off between computational
tractability and fidelity to the original model can be controlled by changing
the association strength in the instrumental model. We further propose the use
of a SMC sampler with a sequence of association strengths, allowing both the
automatic determination of appropriate strengths and for a bias correction
technique to be applied. In contrast to similar distributed Monte Carlo
algorithms, this approach requires few distributional assumptions. The
performance of the algorithms is illustrated with a number of simulated
examples
A Parametric Non-Convex Decomposition Algorithm for Real-Time and Distributed NMPC
A novel decomposition scheme to solve parametric non-convex programs as they
arise in Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) is presented. It consists of
a fixed number of alternating proximal gradient steps and a dual update per
time step. Hence, the proposed approach is attractive in a real-time
distributed context. Assuming that the Nonlinear Program (NLP) is
semi-algebraic and that its critical points are strongly regular, contraction
of the sequence of primal-dual iterates is proven, implying stability of the
sub-optimality error, under some mild assumptions. Moreover, it is shown that
the performance of the optimality-tracking scheme can be enhanced via a
continuation technique. The efficacy of the proposed decomposition method is
demonstrated by solving a centralised NMPC problem to control a DC motor and a
distributed NMPC program for collaborative tracking of unicycles, both within a
real-time framework. Furthermore, an analysis of the sub-optimality error as a
function of the sampling period is proposed given a fixed computational power.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figure
- …