Excellence in Research: Actor-Based Modeling and Control of Distributed Networked Autonomous Systems with Fault-Tolerant Protocol Settings

未来的一个共同愿景是，我们周围的环境充满了智能的分布式自治代理，其正常运作显著依赖于复杂动态环境的紧密集成，做出决策和自主感知环境，并通过这样做来实现一组复杂且经常变化的任务，这些分布式自治代理被设计或预期运行。该提案的重点是提出基于代理的自治系统的设计和功能分析，其中代理动态处理从其连接的邻居接收的信息，并对它们的网络连接进行决策或统计推断，以便在整个分布式系统中进行可靠的交换或聚合信息。该项目的研究结果将对当前分布式自治代理，传感器网络和无处不在的计算系统的开发和部署以及需要高置信度和容错协议设置的交互产生积极影响。该项目还将为STEM学生提供许多机会和教育资源，通过算法开发，测试台实验，性能评估和其他项目相关活动扩大他们对工程的参与。该项目旨在解决试图将数据驱动的计算范式整合到分布式网络自治代理寻求制定战略决策的环境中所带来的根本挑战，推理和/或在复杂的不确定环境中建立可靠的网络连接。其基本思想是扩展分布式自治代理系统的结构行为建模的努力，旨在促进必要的信息传输决策能力或基于容错协议设置的推理。拟议的工作提供了一个框架，以解决以下问题：（一）自治代理应如何动态地修改他们的本地连接的消息传递模式的基础上，他们收到来自邻近的代理在一定的时间内，支持全球网络形成所需的结构属性？(ii)所产生的网络形成过程如何对通信信道中的噪声或由于对手的干扰活动敏感？(iii)在什么条件下网络形成过程可能永远不会达到稳定状态，或者消息模式或协议设置中的任何调整如何能够帮助解决这些问题？总体而言，拟议的框架沿着其理论算法和正在开发的软件工具，将促进过渡到现实世界的应用problem.This奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

A common vision of the future is the one where our surrounding environments are replete with smart distributed autonomous agents whose normal functioning significantly relies on tight integration of complex dynamic environments, making decisions and autonomously sensing their environments, and by doing so realizing a set of complex and often changing tasks for which these distributed autonomous agents are designed or expected to operate. The focus of this proposal is to present design and functionality analysis for autonomous agent-based systems, where agents dynamically process information received from their connected neighbors and make decisions or statistical inferences about their networked connections for reliable exchange or aggregation information across the whole distributed systems. The findings from this project will have positive impacts on the current development and deployment of distributed autonomous agents, sensor networks and ubiquitous computing systems, and their interactions that need high confidence and fault-tolerant protocol settings. The project will also provide many opportunities and educational resources to STEM students that broaden their participation in engineering through algorithm development, testbed experimentation, performance evaluation and other project related activities.This project aims at addressing fundamental challenges that arise from attempting to integrate a data-driven computational paradigm in settings, where distributed networked autonomous agents seek making strategic-decisions, inferences and/or establishing reliable network connections in complex uncertain environments. The basic idea is to expand efforts in modeling the structural behaviors of distributed autonomous agent-based systems, aimed at facilitating transmission of necessary information for decision-making capabilities or inferences based on fault-tolerant protocol settings. The proposed work provides a framework for addressing the following questions: (i) how should autonomous agents dynamically revise their local connections based on the messaging patterns they receive from neighboring agents over a certain duration of time, that support global network formation with desirable structural properties? (ii) how is the resulting network formation process sensitive to noises in the communication channels or jamming activities due to adversaries? (iii) under what conditions may the network formation process never reach steady-state or how any adjustments in the messaging patterns or protocol settings can help address such issues? Overall, the proposed framework along with its theoretical algorithms and software tools that are being developed will facilitate the transition to real-world application problems.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.