Consensus dynamics or agreement dynamics is an area of research lying at the intersection of
systems theory and
graph theory
In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conn ...
. A major topic of investigation is the agreement or consensus problem in
multi-agent systems that concerns processes by which a collection of interacting agents achieve a common goal. Networks of agents that exchange information to reach consensus include: physiological systems, gene networks, large-scale energy systems and fleets of vehicles on land, in the air or in space. The agreement protocol or consensus protocol is an unforced
dynamical system
In mathematics, a dynamical system is a system in which a function describes the time dependence of a point in an ambient space. Examples include the mathematical models that describe the swinging of a clock pendulum, the flow of water in ...
that is governed by the interconnection topology and the initial condition for each agent. Other problems are the
rendezvous problem,
synchronization
Synchronization is the coordination of events to operate a system in unison. For example, the conductor of an orchestra keeps the orchestra synchronized or ''in time''. Systems that operate with all parts in synchrony are said to be synchronou ...
, flocking, formation control. One solution paradigm is
distributed constraint reasoning.
To investigate the argumentation of different subjects, a simulation is a useful tool. It can be measured, if an argument provides an additional truth value for a debate.
See also
*
Consensus (computer science)
A fundamental problem in distributed computing and multi-agent systems is to achieve overall system reliability in the presence of a number of faulty processes. This often requires coordinating processes to reach consensus, or agree on some data v ...
References
* Ghapani, S.; Mei, J.; Ren, W.; Song, Y. (2016), "Fully distributed flocking with a moving leader for lagrange networks with parametric uncertainties", ''Automatica'', 67–76,
doi:10.1016/j.automatica.2016.01.004
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Consensus Dynamics
Multi-agent systems
Network theory
Control theory
Graph theory
Game theory
Distributed computing
Constraint programming