Persistence based analysis of consensus protocols for dynamic graph networks

This article deals with the consensus problem involving agents with time-varying singularities in the dynamics or communication in undirected graph networks. Existing results provide control laws which guarantee asymptotic consensus. These results are based on the analysis of a system switching between piecewise constant and time-invariant dynamics. This work introduces a new analysis technique relying upon classical notions of persistence of excitation to study the convergence properties of the time-varying multi-agent dynamics. Since the individual edge weights pass through singularities and vary with time, the closed-loop dynamics consists of a non-autonomous linear system. Instead of simplifying to a piecewise continuous switched system as in literature, smooth variations in edge weights are allowed, albeit assuming an underlying persistence condition which characterizes sufficient inter-agent communication to reach consensus. The consensus task is converted to edge-agreement in order to study a stabilization problem to which classical persistence based results apply. The new technique allows precise computation of the rate of convergence to the consensus value.Comment: This article contains 7 pages and includes 4 figures. it is accepted in 13th European Control Conferenc

Cooperation Without Immediate Reciprocity: An Experiment in Favor Exchange

This paper presents experimental evidence concerned with behavior in indefinite horizon two-person dynamic favor exchange games. Subjects interact in pairs in continuous time and occasionally one of them receives opportunity to provide a favor to her partner. The effects of changing the benefit of receiving a favor and the arrival rate of opportunities to do a favor are studied when the opportunities are privately observed. Also considered are the impacts of informational access to partner’s opportunities on efficiency and the overall behavior of individuals with respect to “obvious” state variables