Emergent Dynamics of Information Propagation in Large Networks

Abstract

Large scale networked systems that include heterogeneous entities, e.g., humans and computational entities are becoming increasingly prevalent. Prominent applications include the Internet, large scale disaster relief and network centric warfare. In such systems, large heterogeneous coordinating entities exchange uncertain information to obtain situation awareness. Uncertain and possibly conflicting sensor data is shared across a peer-to-peer network. Not every team member will have direct access to sensors and team members will be influenced mostly by their neighbors in the network with whom they communicate directly. In this talk I will present our work on the dynamics and emergent behaviors of a large team sharing beliefs to reach conclusions about the world. Unlike past work, the nodes in the networks we study are autonomous and actively fuse information they receive. Nodes can change their beliefs as they receive additional information over time.