Influence functions, followers and command games

We study and compare two frameworks: a model of influence, and command games. In the influence model, in which players are to make a certain acceptance/rejection decision, due to influence of other players, the decision of a player may be different from his inclination. We study a relation between two central concepts of this model: influence function, and follower function. We deliver sufficient and necessary conditions for a function to be a follower function, and we describe the structure of the set of all influence functions that lead to a given follower function. In the command structure introduced by Hu and Shapley, for each player a simple game called the command game is built. One of the central concepts of this model is the concept of command function. We deliver sufficient and necessary conditions for a function to be a command function,and describe the minimal sets generating a normal command game. We also study the relation between command games and influence functions. A sufficient and necessary condition for the equivalence between an influence function and a normal command game is delivered.influence function, follower function, lower and upper inverses, kernel, command game, command function, minimal sets generating a command game

Influence functions, followers and command games

We study and compare two frameworks: a model of influence, and command games. In the influence model, in which players are to make a certain acceptance/rejection decision, due to influence of other players, the decision of a player may be different from his inclination. We study a relation between two central concepts of this model: influence function, and follower function. We deliver sufficient and necessary conditions for a function to be a follower function, and we describe the structure of the set of all influence functions that lead to a given follower function. In the command structure introduced by Hu and Shapley, for each player a simple game called the command game is built. One of the central concepts of this model is the concept of command function. We deliver sufficient and necessary conditions for a function to be a command function, and describe the minimal sets generating a normal command game. We also study the relation between command games and influence functions. A sufficient and necessary condition for the equivalence between an influence function and a normal command game is delivered.influence function;follower function;lower and upper inverses;kernel;command game;command function;minimal sets generating a command game

Measuring influence in command games

In the paper, we study a relation between command games proposed by Hu and Shapley and an influence model. We show that our framework of influence is more general than the framework of the command games. We define several influence functions which capture the command structure. These functions are compatible with the command games, in the sense that each commandable player for a coalition in the command game is a follower of the coalition under the command influence function. Some of the presented influence functions are equivalent to the command games, that is, they are compatible with the command games, and additionally each follower of a coalition under the command influence function is also a commandable player for that coalition in the command games. For some influence functions we define the equivalent command games. We show that not for all influence functions the compatible command games exist. Moreover, we propose a more general definition of the influence index and show that under some assumptions, some power indices, which can be used in the command games, coincide with some expressions of the weighted influence indices. Both the Shapley-Shubik index and the Banzhaf index are equal to a difference between the weighted influence indices under some influence functions, and the only difference between these two power indices lies in the weights for the influence indices. An example of the Confucian model of society is broadly examined.influence function; follower; influence index; command game; commandable player; Shapley-Shubik index; Banzhaf index

COORDINATION OF LEADER-FOLLOWER MULTI-AGENT SYSTEM WITH TIME-VARYING OBJECTIVE FUNCTION

This thesis aims to introduce a new framework for the distributed control of multi-agent systems with adjustable swarm control objectives. Our goal is twofold: 1) to provide an overview to how time-varying objectives in the control of autonomous systems may be applied to the distributed control of multi-agent systems with variable autonomy level, and 2) to introduce a framework to incorporate the proposed concept to fundamental swarm behaviors such as aggregation and leader tracking. Leader-follower multi-agent systems are considered in this study, and a general form of time-dependent artificial potential function is proposed to describe the varying objectives of the system in the case of complete information exchange. Using Lyapunov methods, the stability and boundedness of the agents\u27 trajectories under single order and higher order dynamics are analyzed. Illustrative numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate the validity of our results. Then, we extend these results for multi-agent systems with limited information exchange and switching communication topology. The first steps of the realization of an experimental framework have been made with the ultimate goal of verifying the simulation results in practice

A Shared-Constraint Approach to Multi-leader Multi-follower Games

Multi-leader multi-follower games are a class of hierarchical games in which a collection of leaders compete in a Nash game constrained by the equilibrium conditions of another Nash game amongst the followers. The resulting equilibrium problem with equilibrium constraints is complicated by nonconvex agent problems and therefore providing tractable conditions for existence of global or even local equilibria for it has proved challenging. Consequently, much of the extant research on this topic is either model specific or relies on weaker notions of equilibria. We consider a modified formulation in which every leader is cognizant of the equilibrium constraints of all leaders. Equilibria of this modified game contain the equilibria, if any, of the original game. The new formulation has a constraint structure called shared constraints, and our main result shows that if the leader objectives admit a potential function, the global minimizers of the potential function over the shared constraint are equilibria of the modified formulation. We provide another existence result using fixed point theory that does not require potentiality. Additionally, local minima, B-stationary, and strong-stationary points of this minimization are shown to be local Nash equilibria, Nash B-stationary, and Nash strong-stationary points of the corresponding multi-leader multi-follower game. We demonstrate the relationship between variational equilibria associated with this modified shared-constraint game and equilibria of the original game from the standpoint of the multiplier sets and show how equilibria of the original formulation may be recovered. We note through several examples that such potential multi-leader multi-follower games capture a breadth of application problems of interest and demonstrate our findings on a multi-leader multi-follower Cournot game.Comment: The earlier manuscript was rejected. We felt it had too many themes crowding it and decided to make a separate paper from each theme. This submission draws some parts from the earlier manuscript and adds new results. Another parts is under review with the IEEE TAC (on arxiv) and another was published in Proc IEEE CDC, 2013. This submission is under review with Set-valued and Variational Analysi

Measuring influence in command games

In the paper, we study a relation between command games proposed by Hu and Shapley and an influence model. We show that our framework of influence is more general than the framework of the command games. We define several influence functions which capture the command structure. These functions are compatible with the command games, in the sense that each commandable player for a coalition in the command game is a follower of the coalition under the command influence function. For some influence functions we define the command games such that the influence functions are compatible with these games. We show that not for all influence functions such command games exist. Moreover, we propose a more general definition of the influence index and show that some power indices, which can be used in the command games, coincide with some expressions of the weighted influence indices. We show exact relations between an influence function and a follower function, between a command game and commandable players, and between influence functions and command games. An example of the Confucian model of society is broadly examined.Banzhaf index ; Coleman indices ; command game ; follower of a coalition ; influence function ; influence indices ; Shapley-Shubik index