Consensus dynamics or agreement dynamics is an area of research lying at the intersection of

systems theory Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or human-made. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structu ...

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 system A multi-agent system (MAS or "self-organized system") is a computerized system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents.Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Jang, I.; Arvin, F.; Lanzon, A.,A Decentralized Cluster Formation Containment Framework f ...

s 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 The rendezvous dilemma is a logical dilemma, typically formulated in this way: :Two people have a date in a park they have never been to before. Arriving separately in the park, they are both surprised to discover that it is a huge area and conseq ...

, synchronization, flocking, formation control. One solution paradigm is

distributed constraint reasoning Distributed constraint optimization (DCOP or DisCOP) is the distributed analogue to constraint optimization. A DCOP is a problem in which a group of agents must distributedly choose values for a set of variables such that the cost of a set of const ...

. 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.

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

See also

References