45,624 research outputs found
Quality of Information in Mobile Crowdsensing: Survey and Research Challenges
Smartphones have become the most pervasive devices in people's lives, and are
clearly transforming the way we live and perceive technology. Today's
smartphones benefit from almost ubiquitous Internet connectivity and come
equipped with a plethora of inexpensive yet powerful embedded sensors, such as
accelerometer, gyroscope, microphone, and camera. This unique combination has
enabled revolutionary applications based on the mobile crowdsensing paradigm,
such as real-time road traffic monitoring, air and noise pollution, crime
control, and wildlife monitoring, just to name a few. Differently from prior
sensing paradigms, humans are now the primary actors of the sensing process,
since they become fundamental in retrieving reliable and up-to-date information
about the event being monitored. As humans may behave unreliably or
maliciously, assessing and guaranteeing Quality of Information (QoI) becomes
more important than ever. In this paper, we provide a new framework for
defining and enforcing the QoI in mobile crowdsensing, and analyze in depth the
current state-of-the-art on the topic. We also outline novel research
challenges, along with possible directions of future work.Comment: To appear in ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN
Multi-round Master-Worker Computing: a Repeated Game Approach
We consider a computing system where a master processor assigns tasks for
execution to worker processors through the Internet. We model the workers
decision of whether to comply (compute the task) or not (return a bogus result
to save the computation cost) as a mixed extension of a strategic game among
workers. That is, we assume that workers are rational in a game-theoretic
sense, and that they randomize their strategic choice. Workers are assigned
multiple tasks in subsequent rounds. We model the system as an infinitely
repeated game of the mixed extension of the strategic game. In each round, the
master decides stochastically whether to accept the answer of the majority or
verify the answers received, at some cost. Incentives and/or penalties are
applied to workers accordingly. Under the above framework, we study the
conditions in which the master can reliably obtain tasks results, exploiting
that the repeated games model captures the effect of long-term interaction.
That is, workers take into account that their behavior in one computation will
have an effect on the behavior of other workers in the future. Indeed, should a
worker be found to deviate from some agreed strategic choice, the remaining
workers would change their own strategy to penalize the deviator. Hence, being
rational, workers do not deviate. We identify analytically the parameter
conditions to induce a desired worker behavior, and we evaluate experi-
mentally the mechanisms derived from such conditions. We also compare the
performance of our mechanisms with a previously known multi-round mechanism
based on reinforcement learning.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figure
Human Computation and Economics
This article is devoted to economical aspects of Human Computation (HC) and
to perspectives of HC in economics. As of economical aspects of HC, it is first
observed that much of what makes HC systems effective is economical in nature
suggesting that complexity being reconsidered as a âHC complexityâ and the conception
of efficient HC systems as a âHC economicsâ. This article also points to the
relevance of HC in the development of standard software and to the importance of
competition in HC systems. As of HC in economics, it is first argued that markets
can be seen as HC systems avant la lettre. Looking more closely at financial markets,
the article then points to a speed differential between transactions and credit
risk awareness that compromises the efficiency of financial markets. Finally, a HCbased
credit risk rating is proposed that, overcoming the afore mentioned speed
differential, holds promise for better functioning financial markets
Lower Bounds on Implementing Robust and Resilient Mediators
We consider games that have (k,t)-robust equilibria when played with a
mediator, where an equilibrium is (k,t)-robust if it tolerates deviations by
coalitions of size up to k and deviations by up to players with unknown
utilities. We prove lower bounds that match upper bounds on the ability to
implement such mediators using cheap talk (that is, just allowing communication
among the players). The bounds depend on (a) the relationship between k, t, and
n, the total number of players in the system; (b) whether players know the
exact utilities of other players; (c) whether there are broadcast channels or
just point-to-point channels; (d) whether cryptography is available; and (e)
whether the game has a k+t$ players, guarantees that every player gets a
worse outcome than they do with the equilibrium strategy
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