The Influence of Memory in Multi-Agent Consensus

David Kohan Marzagão, Luciana Basualdo Bonatto, Tiago Madeira, Marcelo Matheus Gauy, Peter McBurney

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference paperpeer-review

Abstract

Multi-agent consensus problems can often be seen as a sequence of autonomous and independent local choices between a finite set of decision options, with each local choice undertaken simultaneously, and with a shared goal of achieving a global consensus state. Being able to estimate probabilities for the different outcomes and to predict how long it takes for a consensus to be formed, if ever, are core issues for such protocols. Little attention has been given to protocols in which agents can remember past or outdated states. In this paper, we propose a framework to study what we call memory consensus protocol. We show that the employment of memory allows such processes to always converge, as well as, in some scenarios, such as cycles, converge faster. We provide a theoretical analysis of the probability of each option eventually winning such processes based on the initial opinions expressed by agents. Further, we perform experiments to investigate network topologies in which agents benefit from memory on the expected time needed for consensus.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI 2021
PublisherAssociation for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
Pages11254-11262
Number of pages9
ISBN (Electronic)9781713835974
Publication statusPublished - 2021
Event35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI 2021 - Virtual, Online
Duration: 2 Feb 20219 Feb 2021

Publication series

Name35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI 2021
Volume13A

Conference

Conference35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI 2021
CityVirtual, Online
Period2/02/20219/02/2021

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