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arXiv · 1807.00893

Controlling a population

Nathalie Bertrand·Miheer Dewaskar·Blaise Genest·Hugo Gimbert·Adwait Amit Godbole
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Abstract

We introduce a new setting where a population of agents, each modelled by a finite-state system, are controlled uniformly: the controller applies the same action to every agent. The framework is largely inspired by the control of a biological system, namely a population of yeasts, where the controller may only change the environment common to all cells. We study a synchronisation problem for such populations: no matter how individual agents react to the actions of the controller, the controller aims at driving all agents synchronously to a target state. The agents are naturally represented by a non-deterministic finite state automaton (NFA), the same for every agent, and the whole system is encoded as a 2-player game. The first player (Controller) chooses actions, and the second player (Agents) resolves non-determinism for each agent. The game with m agents is called the m -population game. This gives rise to a parameterized control problem (where control refers to 2 player games), namely the population control problem: can Controller control the m-population game for all m in N whatever Agents does?

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Nathalie Bertrand, Miheer Dewaskar, Blaise Genest, Hugo Gimbert, Adwait Amit Godbole. 2018-07-02. Controlling a population. https://doi.org/10.23638/lmcs-15(3:6)2019

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