The Hierarchical Accumulation of Knowledge in the Distributed Adaptive Control Architecture

Author(s):  
Encarni Marcos ◽  
Milanka Ringwald ◽  
Armin Duff ◽  
Martí Sánchez-Fibla ◽  
Paul F. M. J. Verschure
Author(s):  
Ehsan Arabi ◽  
Tansel Yucelen ◽  
Wassim M. Haddad

Networked multi-agent systems consist of interacting agents that locally exchange information, energy, or matter. Since these systems do not in general have a centralized architecture to monitor the activity of each agent, resilient distributed control system design for networked multi-agent systems is essential in providing high system performance, reliability, and operation in the presence of system uncertainties. An important class of such system uncertainties that can significantly deteriorate the achievable closed-loop system performance is sensor uncertainties, which can arise due to low sensor quality, sensor failure, sensor bias, or detrimental environmental conditions. This paper presents a novel distributed adaptive control architecture for networked multi-agent systems with undirected communication graph topologies to mitigate the effect of sensor uncertainties. Specifically, we consider agents having identical high-order, linear dynamics with agent interactions corrupted by unknown exogenous disturbances. We show that the proposed adaptive control architecture guarantees asymptotic stability of the closed-loop dynamical system when the exogenous disturbances are time-invariant and uniform ultimate boundedness when the exogenous disturbances are time-varying. Two numerical examples are provided to illustrate the efficacy of the proposed distributed adaptive control architecture.


Author(s):  
Paul F. M. J. Verschure

This chapter presents the Distributed Adaptive Control (DAC) theory of the mind and brain of living machines. DAC provides an explanatory framework for biological brains and an integration framework for synthetic ones. DAC builds on several themes presented in the handbook: it integrates different perspectives on mind and brain, exemplifies the synthetic method in understanding living machines, answers well-defined constraints faced by living machines, and provides a route for the convergent validation of anatomy, physiology, and behavior in our explanation of biological living machines. DAC addresses the fundamental question of how a living machine can obtain, retain, and express valid knowledge of its world. We look at the core components of DAC, specific benchmarks derived from the engagement with the physical and the social world (the H4W and the H5W problems) in foraging and human–robot interaction tasks. Lastly we address how DAC targets the UTEM benchmark and the relation with contemporary developments in AI.


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