Deception in Optimal Control

In this paper, we consider an adversarial scenario where one agent seeks to achieve an objective and its adversary seeks to learn the agent's intentions and prevent the agent from achieving its objective. The agent has an incentive to try to deceive the adversary about its intentions, while at the same time working to achieve its objective. The primary contribution of this paper is to introduce a mathematically rigorous framework for the notion of deception within the context of optimal control. The central notion introduced in the paper is that of a belief-induced reward: a reward dependent not only on the agent's state and action, but also adversary's beliefs. Design of an optimal deceptive strategy then becomes a question of optimal control design on the product of the agent's state space and the adversary's belief space. The proposed framework allows for deception to be defined in an arbitrary control system endowed with a reward function, as well as with additional specifications limiting the agent's control policy. In addition to defining deception, we discuss design of optimally deceptive strategies under uncertainties in agent's knowledge about the adversary's learning process. In the latter part of the paper, we focus on a setting where the agent's behavior is governed by a Markov decision process, and show that the design of optimally deceptive strategies under lack of knowledge about the adversary naturally reduces to previously discussed problems in control design on partially observable or uncertain Markov decision processes. Finally, we present two examples of deceptive strategies: a "cops and robbers" scenario and an example where an agent may use camouflage while moving. We show that optimally deceptive strategies in such examples follow the intuitive idea of how to deceive an adversary in the above settings

Physiological and Psychological Effects of Deception on Pacing Strategy and Performance: A Review

The aim of an optimal pacing strategy during exercise is to enhance performance whilst ensuring physiological limits are not surpassed, which has been shown to result in a metabolic reserve at the end of the exercise. There has been debate surrounding the theoretical models that have been proposed to explain how pace is regulated, with more recent research investigating a central control of exercise regulation. Deception has recently emerged as a common, practical approach to manipulate key variables during exercise. There are a number of ways in which deception interventions have been designed, each intending to gain particular insights into pacing behaviour and performance. Deception methodologies can be conceptualised according to a number of dimensions such as deception timing (prior to or during exercise), presentation frequency (blind, discontinuous or continuous) and type of deception (performance, biofeedback or environmental feedback). However, research evidence on the effects of deception has been perplexing and the use of complex designs and varied methodologies makes it difficult to draw any definitive conclusions about how pacing strategy and performance are affected by deception. This review examines existing research in the area of deception and pacing strategies, and provides a critical appraisal of the different methodological approaches used to date. It is hoped that this analysis will inform the direction and methodology of future investigations in this area by addressing the mechanisms through which deception impacts upon performance and by elucidating the potential application of deception techniques in training and competitive settings