255 research outputs found
Distributed estimation and control of node centrality in undirected asymmetric networks
Measures of node centrality that describe the importance of a node within a
network are crucial for understanding the behavior of social networks and
graphs. In this paper, we address the problems of distributed estimation and
control of node centrality in undirected graphs with asymmetric weight values.
In particular, we focus our attention on -centrality, which can be seen
as a generalization of eigenvector centrality. In this setting, we first
consider a distributed protocol where agents compute their -centrality,
focusing on the convergence properties of the method; then, we combine the
estimation method with a consensus algorithm to achieve a consensus value
weighted by the influence of each node in the network. Finally, we formulate an
-centrality control problem which is naturally decoupled and, thus,
suitable for a distributed setting and we apply this formulation to protect the
most valuable nodes in a network against a targeted attack, by making every
node in the network equally important in terms of {\alpha}-centrality.
Simulations results are provided to corroborate the theoretical findings.Comment: published on IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/912618
Route Swarm: Wireless Network Optimization through Mobility
In this paper, we demonstrate a novel hybrid architecture for coordinating
networked robots in sensing and information routing applications. The proposed
INformation and Sensing driven PhysIcally REconfigurable robotic network
(INSPIRE), consists of a Physical Control Plane (PCP) which commands agent
position, and an Information Control Plane (ICP) which regulates information
flow towards communication/sensing objectives. We describe an instantiation
where a mobile robotic network is dynamically reconfigured to ensure high
quality routes between static wireless nodes, which act as source/destination
pairs for information flow. The ICP commands the robots towards evenly
distributed inter-flow allocations, with intra-flow configurations that
maximize route quality. The PCP then guides the robots via potential-based
control to reconfigure according to ICP commands. This formulation, deemed
Route Swarm, decouples information flow and physical control, generating a
feedback between routing and sensing needs and robotic configuration. We
demonstrate our propositions through simulation under a realistic wireless
network regime.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, submitted to the IEEE International Conference on
Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 201
The Observability Radius of Networks
This paper studies the observability radius of network systems, which
measures the robustness of a network to perturbations of the edges. We consider
linear networks, where the dynamics are described by a weighted adjacency
matrix, and dedicated sensors are positioned at a subset of nodes. We allow for
perturbations of certain edge weights, with the objective of preventing
observability of some modes of the network dynamics. To comply with the network
setting, our work considers perturbations with a desired sparsity structure,
thus extending the classic literature on the observability radius of linear
systems. The paper proposes two sets of results. First, we propose an
optimization framework to determine a perturbation with smallest Frobenius norm
that renders a desired mode unobservable from the existing sensor nodes.
Second, we study the expected observability radius of networks with given
structure and random edge weights. We provide fundamental robustness bounds
dependent on the connectivity properties of the network and we analytically
characterize optimal perturbations of line and star networks, showing that line
networks are inherently more robust than star networks.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure
Secure rendezvous and static containment in multi-agent systems with adversarial intruders
In this paper we propose a novel distributed local interaction protocol for networks of multi-agent systems (MASs) in a multi-dimensional space under directed time-varying graph with the objective to achieve secure rendezvous or static containment within the convex hull of a set of leader agents. We consider the scenario where a set of anonymous adversarial agents may intrude the network (or may be hijacked by a cyber-attack) and show that the proposed strategy guarantees the achievement of the global objective despite the continued influence of the adversaries which cannot be detected nor identified by the collaborative agents. We characterize the convergence properties of the proposed protocol in terms of the characteristics of the underlying network topology of the multi-agent system. Numerical simulations and examples corroborate the theoretical results
The Observability Radius of Networks
This paper studies the observability radius of network systems, which measures the robustness of a network to perturbations of the edges. We consider linear networks, where the dynamics are described by a weighted adjacency matrix and dedicated sensors are positioned at a subset of nodes. We allow for perturbations of certain edge weights with the objective of preventing observability of some modes of the network dynamics. To comply with the network setting, our work considers perturbations with a desired sparsity structure, thus extending the classic literature on the observability radius of linear systems. The paper proposes two sets of results. First, we propose an optimization framework to determine a perturbation with smallest Frobenius norm that renders a desired mode unobservable from the existing sensor nodes. Second, we study the expected observability radius of networks with given structure and random edge weights. We provide fundamental robustness bounds dependent on the connectivity properties of the network and we analytically characterize optimal perturbations of line and star networks, showing that line networks are inherently more robust than star networks
Decentralized Estimation of Laplacian Eigenvalues in Multi-Agent Systems
In this paper we present a decentralized algorithm to estimate the
eigenvalues of the Laplacian matrix that encodes the network topology of a
multi-agent system. We consider network topologies modeled by undirected
graphs. The basic idea is to provide a local interaction rule among agents so
that their state trajectory is a linear combination of sinusoids oscillating
only at frequencies function of the eigenvalues of the Laplacian matrix. In
this way, the problem of decentralized estimation of the eigenvalues is mapped
into a standard signal processing problem in which the unknowns are the finite
number of frequencies at which the signal oscillates
Selective Trimmed Average: A Resilient Federated Learning Algorithm With Deterministic Guarantees on the Optimality Approximation
The federated learning (FL) paradigm aims to distribute the computational burden of the training process among several computation units, usually called agents or workers, while preserving private local training datasets. This is generally achieved by resorting to a server-worker architecture where agents iteratively update local models and communicate local parameters to a server that aggregates and returns them to the agents. However, the presence of adversarial agents, which may intentionally exchange malicious parameters or may have corrupted local datasets, can jeopardize the FL process. Therefore, we propose selective trimmed average (SETA), which is a resilient algorithm to cope with the undesirable effects of a number of misbehaving agents in the global model. SETA is based on properly filtering and combining the exchanged parameters. We mathematically prove that the proposed algorithm is resilient against data and local model poisoning attacks. Most resilient methods presented so far in the literature assume that a trusted server is in hand. In contrast, our algorithm works both in server-worker and shared memory architectures, where the latter excludes the necessity of a trusted server. The theoretical findings are corroborated through numerical results on MNIST dataset and on multiclass weather dataset (MWD)
A Sum-of-States Preservation Framework for Open Multi-Agent Systems With Nonlinear Heterogeneous Coupling
In this paper, we develop a general Open Multi-Agent Systems (OMAS) framework over undirected graphs where the agents' interaction is, in general, nonlinear, time-varying, and heterogeneous, in that the agents interact with different pairwise interaction rules for each link, possibly nonlinear, which may change over time. In particular, assuming the agents interact by exchanging flows , which modify their states, our framework guarantees that the sum of the states of agents participating to the network is preserved. To this end, agents maintain a state variable for each of their neighbors. Upon disconnection of a neighbor, such a variable is used to completely eliminate the effect of previous interaction with disconnected agents from the overall systems. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed OMAS framework, we provide a case study focused on average consensus, and, specifically, we develop a sufficient condition on the structure of the agents' interaction guaranteeing asymptotic convergence under the assumption that the network becomes fixed. The paper is complemented by simulation results that numerically demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method
Ensemble Latent Space Roadmap for Improved Robustness in Visual Action Planning
Planning in learned latent spaces helps to decrease the dimensionality of raw
observations. In this work, we propose to leverage the ensemble paradigm to
enhance the robustness of latent planning systems. We rely on our Latent Space
Roadmap (LSR) framework, which builds a graph in a learned structured latent
space to perform planning. Given multiple LSR framework instances, that differ
either on their latent spaces or on the parameters for constructing the graph,
we use the action information as well as the embedded nodes of the produced
plans to define similarity measures. These are then utilized to select the most
promising plans. We validate the performance of our Ensemble LSR (ENS-LSR) on
simulated box stacking and grape harvesting tasks as well as on a real-world
robotic T-shirt folding experiment
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