Distributed Averaging via Gossiping
A. Stephen Morse (Dudley Professor of Engineering at Yale University)
SYSTEMS AND CONTROL SERIESDATE: 2012-03-09
TIME: 11:00:00 - 12:00:00
LOCATION: RSISE Seminar Room, ground floor, building 115, cnr. North and Daley Roads, ANU
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ABSTRACT:
There has been considerable interest recently in developing algorithms for distributing in- formation among the members of a group of sensors or mobile autonomous agents via local interactions. Notable among these are those algorithms intended to cause such a group to reach a consensus in a distributed manner One particular type of consensus process which has received much attention lately is called distributed averaging. By the distributed averaging problem is meant the problem of computing the average value of a set of numbers possessed by the agents in a distributed network using only communication between neighboring agents. Gossiping is a well-known approach to the problem which seeks to iteratively arrive at a solution by allowing each agent to interchange information with at most one neighbor at each iterative step. Crafting a gossiping protocol which accomplishes this is challenging because gossiping is an inherently collaborative process which can lead to deadlock unless careful precautions are taken to ensure that it does not. The actual sequence of gossip pairs which occurs during a specific gossip- ing process might be determined either probabilistically or deterministically, depending on the problem of interest. It is the latter type of process to which this talk is addressed.
BIO:
A. Stephen Morse was born in Mt. Vernon, New York. He received a BSEE degree from Cornell University, MS degree from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. degree from Purdue University. After a three year association with the Office of Control Theory and Application OCTA at the NASA Electronics Research Center in Cambridge, Mass, he joined the Yale University faculty where he is presently the Dudley Professor of Engineering. His main interest is in system theory and he has done research in network synthesis, optimal control, multivariable control, adaptive control, urban transportation, vision-based control, hybrid and nonlinear systems, sensor networks, and coordination and control of large grouping of mobile autonomous agents. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and a co-recipient of the IEEE Control System Societyas 1993 and 2005 George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Awards. He has twice received the American Automatic Control Councilas Best Paper Award and is a co-recipient of the Automatica Theory/Methodology Prize . He is the 1999 recipient of the IEEE Technical Field Award for Control Systems. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering.
