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Population protocols are a model of distributed computation in which an arbitrary number of indistinguishable finite-state agents interact in pairs to decide some property of their initial configuration. We investigate the behaviour of…
We consider the \mnk{classical} problem of a controller activating (or sampling) sequentially from a finite number of $N \geq 2$ populations, specified by unknown distributions. Over some time horizon, at each time $n = 1, 2, \ldots$, the…
It was suggested that a programmable matter system (composed of multiple computationally weak mobile particles) should remain connected at all times since otherwise, reconnection is difficult and may be impossible. At the same time, it was…
We show that randomization can lead to significant improvements for a few fundamental problems in distributed tracking. Our basis is the {\em count-tracking} problem, where there are $k$ players, each holding a counter $n_i$ that gets…
Random selection, leader election, and collective coin flipping are fundamental tasks in fault-tolerant distributed computing. We study these problems in the full-information model where despite decades of study, key gaps remain in our…
The paper focuses on mean-field type multi-agent control problems with finite state and action spaces where the dynamics and cost structures are symmetric and homogeneous, and are affected by the distribution of the agents. A standard…
We study a \emph{Plurality-Consensus} process in which each of $n$ anonymous agents of a communication network initially supports an opinion (a color chosen from a finite set $[k]$). Then, in every (synchronous) round, each agent can revise…
Broadcast consensus protocols (BCPs) are a model of computation, in which anonymous, identical, finite-state agents compute by sending/receiving global broadcasts. BCPs are known to compute all number predicates in…
Distance-2-Dispersion (D-2-D) problem aims to disperse $k$ mobile agents starting from an arbitrary initial configuration on an anonymous port-labeled graph $G$ with $n$ nodes such that no two agents occupy adjacent nodes in the final…
We consider the selection problem on a completely connected network of $n$ processors with no shared memory. Each processor initially holds a given numeric item of $b$ bits allowed to send a message of $\max ( b, \lg n )$ bits to another…
We study randomized test-and-set (TAS) implementations from registers in the asynchronous shared memory model with n processes. We introduce the problem of group election, a natural variant of leader election, and propose a framework for…
Self-stabilizing protocols enable distributed systems to recover correct behavior starting from any arbitrary configuration. In particular, when processors communicate by message passing, fake messages may be placed in communication links…
A well-studied randomized election algorithm proceeds as follows: In each round the remaining candidates each toss a coin and leave the competition if they obtain heads. Of interest is the number of rounds required and the number of…
We consider the problem of computing a perfect matching problem in a synchronous distributed network, where the network topology corresponds to a complete bipartite graph. The communication between nodes is restricted to activating…
This paper addresses the finite-time non-overshooting leader-following consensus problem for multi-agent systems, whose agents are modeled by a dynamical system topologically equivalent to the integrator chain. Based on the weighted…
In this paper, we focus on the uniform bipartition problem in the population protocol model. This problem aims to divide a population into two groups of equal size. In particular, we consider the problem in the context of \emph{arbitrary}…
We consider the \emph{approximate minimum selection} problem in presence of \emph{independent random comparison faults}. This problem asks to select one of the smallest $k$ elements in a linearly-ordered collection of $n$ elements by only…
Estimating the density of a distribution from its samples is a fundamental problem in statistics. Hypothesis selection addresses the setting where, in addition to a sample set, we are given $n$ candidate distributions -- referred to as…
We analyze the convergence of the $k$-opinion Undecided State Dynamics (USD) in the population protocol model. For $k$=2 opinions it is well known that the USD reaches consensus with high probability within $O(n \log n)$ interactions.…
The \emph{rational fair consensus problem} can be informally defined as follows. Consider a network of $n$ (selfish) \emph{rational agents}, each of them initially supporting a \emph{color} chosen from a finite set $ \Sigma$. The goal is to…