27,849 research outputs found
Coordination and Privacy Preservation in Multi-Agent Systems
This dissertation considers two key problems in multi-agent systems: coordination (including both synchronization and desynchronization) and privacy preservation.
For coordination in multi-agent systems, we focus on synchronization/desynchronization of distributed pulse-coupled oscillator (PCO) networks and their applications in collective motion coordination. Pulse-coupled oscillators were originally proposed to model synchronization in biological systems such as flashing fireflies and firing neurons. In recent years, with proven scalability, simplicity, accuracy, and robustness, the PCO based synchronization strategy has become a powerful clock synchronization primitive for wireless sensor networks. Driven by these increased applications in biological networks and wireless sensor networks, synchronization of pulse-coupled oscillators has gained increased popularity. However, most existing results address the local synchronization of PCOs with initial phases constrained in a half cycle, and results on global synchronization from any initial condition are very sparse. In our work, we address global PCO synchronization from an arbitrary phase distribution under chain or directed tree graphs. More importantly, different from existing global synchronization studies on decentralized PCO networks, our work allows heterogeneous coupling functions and perturbations on PCOs\u27 natural frequencies, and our results hold under any coupling strength between zero and one, which is crucial because a large coupling strength has been shown to be detrimental to the robustness of PCO synchronization to disturbances.
Compared with synchronization, desynchronization of PCOs is less explored. Desynchronization spreads the phase variables of all PCOs uniformly apart (with equal difference between neighboring phases). It has also been found in many biological phenomena, such as neuron spiking and fish signaling. Recently, phase desynchronization has been employed to achieve round-robin scheduling, which is crucial in applications as diverse as media access control of communication networks, realization of analog-to-digital converters, and scheduling of traffic flows in intersections. In our work, we systematically characterize pulse-coupled oscillators based decentralized phase desynchronization and propose an interaction function that is more general than existing results. Numerical simulations show that the proposed pulse based interaction function also has better robustness to pulse losses, time delays, and frequency errors than existing results.
Collective motion coordination is fundamental in systems as diverse as mobile sensor networks, swarm robotics, autonomous vehicles, and animal groups. Inspired by the close relationship between phase synchronization/desynchronization of PCOs and the heading dynamics of connected vehicles/robots, we propose a pulse-based integrated communication and control approach for collective motion coordination. Our approach only employs simple and identical pulses, which significantly reduces processing latency and communication delay compared with conventional packet based communications. Not only can heading control be achieved in the proposed approach to coordinate the headings (orientations) of motions in a network, but also spacing control for circular motion is achievable to design the spacing between neighboring nodes (e.g., vehicles or robots).
The second part of this dissertation is privacy preservation in multi-agent systems. More specifically, we focus on privacy-preserving average consensus as it is key for multi-agent systems, with applications ranging from time synchronization, information fusion, load balancing, to decentralized control. Existing average consensus algorithms require individual nodes (agents) to exchange explicit state values with their neighbors, which leads to the undesirable disclosure of sensitive information in the state. In our work, we propose a novel average consensus algorithm for time-varying directed graphs which can protect the privacy of participating nodes\u27 initial states. Leveraging algorithm-level obfuscation, the algorithm does not need the assistance of any trusted third party or data aggregator. By leveraging the inherent robustness of consensus dynamics against random variations in interaction, our proposed algorithm can guarantee privacy of participating nodes without compromising the accuracy of consensus. The algorithm is distinctly different from differential-privacy based average consensus approaches which enable privacy through compromising accuracy in obtained consensus value. The approach is able to protect the privacy of participating nodes even in the presence of multiple honest-but-curious nodes which can collude with each other
Secure and Privacy-Preserving Average Consensus
Average consensus is fundamental for distributed systems since it underpins
key functionalities of such systems ranging from distributed information
fusion, decision-making, to decentralized control. In order to reach an
agreement, existing average consensus algorithms require each agent to exchange
explicit state information with its neighbors. This leads to the disclosure of
private state information, which is undesirable in cases where privacy is of
concern. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that enables secure and
privacy-preserving average consensus in a decentralized architecture in the
absence of any trusted third-parties. By leveraging homomorphic cryptography,
our approach can guarantee consensus to the exact value in a deterministic
manner. The proposed approach is light-weight in computation and communication,
and applicable to time-varying interaction topology cases. A hardware
implementation is presented to demonstrate the capability of our approach.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, paper is accepted to CPS-SPC'1
A system-theoretic framework for privacy preservation in continuous-time multiagent dynamics
In multiagent dynamical systems, privacy protection corresponds to avoid
disclosing the initial states of the agents while accomplishing a distributed
task. The system-theoretic framework described in this paper for this scope,
denoted dynamical privacy, relies on introducing output maps which act as
masks, rendering the internal states of an agent indiscernible by the other
agents as well as by external agents monitoring all communications. Our output
masks are local (i.e., decided independently by each agent), time-varying
functions asymptotically converging to the true states. The resulting masked
system is also time-varying, and has the original unmasked system as its limit
system. When the unmasked system has a globally exponentially stable
equilibrium point, it is shown in the paper that the masked system has the same
point as a global attractor. It is also shown that existence of equilibrium
points in the masked system is not compatible with dynamical privacy.
Application of dynamical privacy to popular examples of multiagent dynamics,
such as models of social opinions, average consensus and synchronization, is
investigated in detail.Comment: 38 pages, 4 figures, extended version of arXiv preprint
arXiv:1808.0808
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