2017 • Conference Paper
MAX-consensus in open multi-agent systems with gossip interactions
Authors:
Abdelrahim, Mahmoud,
Hendrickx, Julien ,
Maurice Heemels (Eindhoven University of Technology)
Published in:
Proceedings of the 56th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC 2017)
We study the problem of distributed maximum computation in an open multi-agent system, where agents can leave and arrive during the execution of the algorithm. The mainchallengecomesfromthepossibilitythattheagentholding the largest value leaves the system, which changes the value to be computed. The algorithms must as a result be endowed with mechanisms allowing to forget outdated information. The focus is on systems in which interactions are pairwise gossips betweenrandomlyselectedagents.Weconsidersituationswhere leaving agents can send a last message, and situations where they cannot. For both cases, we provide algorithms able to eventually compute the maximum of the values held by agents.