Designing games to handle coupled constraints

The central goal in multiagent systems is to design local control laws for the individual agents to ensure that the emergent global behavior is desirable with respect to a given system level objective. In many systems, such as cooperative robotics or distributed power control, the design of these local control algorithms is further complicated by additional coupled constraints on the agents' actions. There are several approaches in the existing literature for designing such algorithms stemming from classical optimization theory; however, many of these approaches are not suitable for implementation in multiagent systems. This paper seeks to address the design of such algorithms using the field of game theory. Among other things, this design choice requires defining a local utility function for each decision maker in the system. This paper seeks to address the degree to which utility design can be effective for dealing with these coupled constraints. In particular, is it possible to design local agent utility functions such that all pure Nash equilibrium of the unconstrained game (i) optimize the given system level objective and (ii) satisfy the given coupled constraint. This design would greatly simplify the distributed control algorithms by eliminating the need to explicitly consider the constraints. Unfortunately, we illustrate that designing utility functions within the standard game theoretic framework is not suitable for this design objective. However, we demonstrate that by adding an additional state variable in the game environment, i.e., moving towards state based games, we can satisfy these performance criteria by utility design. We focus on the problem of consensus control to illustrate these results

The design-by-adaptation approach to universal access: learning from videogame technology

This paper proposes an alternative approach to the design of universally accessible interfaces to that provided by formal design frameworks applied ab initio to the development of new software. This approach, design-byadaptation, involves the transfer of interface technology and/or design principles from one application domain to another, in situations where the recipient domain is similar to the host domain in terms of modelled systems, tasks and users. Using the example of interaction in 3D virtual environments, the paper explores how principles underlying the design of videogame interfaces may be applied to a broad family of visualization and analysis software which handles geographical data (virtual geographic environments, or VGEs). One of the motivations behind the current study is that VGE technology lags some way behind videogame technology in the modelling of 3D environments, and has a less-developed track record in providing the variety of interaction methods needed to undertake varied tasks in 3D virtual worlds by users with varied levels of experience. The current analysis extracted a set of interaction principles from videogames which were used to devise a set of 3D task interfaces that have been implemented in a prototype VGE for formal evaluation

Tangible user interfaces : past, present and future directions

In the last two decades, Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) have emerged as a new interface type that interlinks the digital and physical worlds. Drawing upon users' knowledge and skills of interaction with the real non-digital world, TUIs show a potential to enhance the way in which people interact with and leverage digital information. However, TUI research is still in its infancy and extensive research is required in or- der to fully understand the implications of tangible user interfaces, to develop technologies that further bridge the digital and the physical, and to guide TUI design with empirical knowledge. This paper examines the existing body of work on Tangible User In- terfaces. We start by sketching the history of tangible user interfaces, examining the intellectual origins of this field. We then present TUIs in a broader context, survey application domains, and review frame- works and taxonomies. We also discuss conceptual foundations of TUIs including perspectives from cognitive sciences, phycology, and philoso- phy. Methods and technologies for designing, building, and evaluating TUIs are also addressed. Finally, we discuss the strengths and limita- tions of TUIs and chart directions for future research

A Douglas-Rachford splitting for semi-decentralized equilibrium seeking in generalized aggregative games

We address the generalized aggregative equilibrium seeking problem for noncooperative agents playing average aggregative games with affine coupling constraints. First, we use operator theory to characterize the generalized aggregative equilibria of the game as the zeros of a monotone set-valued operator. Then, we massage the Douglas-Rachford splitting to solve the monotone inclusion problem and derive a single layer, semi-decentralized algorithm whose global convergence is guaranteed under mild assumptions. The potential of the proposed Douglas-Rachford algorithm is shown on a simplified resource allocation game, where we observe faster convergence with respect to forward-backward algorithms.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1803.1044