A Distributed Simplex Architecture for Multi-Agent Systems

We present Distributed Simplex Architecture (DSA), a new runtime assurance technique that provides safety guarantees for multi-agent systems (MASs). DSA is inspired by the Simplex control architecture of Sha et al., but with some significant differences. The traditional Simplex approach is limited t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2020-12
Main Authors: Mehmood, Usama, Stoller, Scott D, Grosu, Radu, Roy, Shouvik, Damare, Amol, Smolka, Scott A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Collision avoidance
Distributed generation
Multiagent systems
Safety
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:We present Distributed Simplex Architecture (DSA), a new runtime assurance technique that provides safety guarantees for multi-agent systems (MASs). DSA is inspired by the Simplex control architecture of Sha et al., but with some significant differences. The traditional Simplex approach is limited to single-agent systems or a MAS with a centralized control scheme. DSA addresses this limitation by extending the scope of Simplex to include MASs under distributed control. In DSA, each agent has a local instance of traditional Simplex such that the preservation of safety in the local instances implies safety for the entire MAS. We provide a proof of safety for DSA, and present experimental results for several case studies, including flocking with collision avoidance, safe navigation of ground rovers through way-points, and the safe operation of a microgrid.
ISSN:2331-8422