Resilient Monitoring of Social Dynamical Systems through Collaborative Multi-Agent Networks under Latency

Abstract

Social dynamical networks significantly influence contemporary digital landscapes, affecting realms from social activism to public policy formulation. This paper investigates the use of multi-agent systems (MAS) to monitor and analyze these networks. Firstly, we propose a single-time-scale distributed inference model designed to effectively manage challenges such as latency and agent failure. Secondly, we provide sufficient conditions that ensure the stability of the proposed scheme. Notably, the observer gain design remains effective regardless of time delays. Thirdly, we develop a computationally efficient recovery mechanism for agent failures that relies on employing graph-theoretic approaches to restore network observability by replacing failed agents (due to sensing failure or unbounded delays, i.e., packet drops) by implementing computationally efficient graph-theoretic methods to assign observationally equivalent agent counterparts. Lastly, we illustrate the proposed scheme through a pedagogical example and real-world network applications.