Measuring Target Predictability for Optimal Environment Design

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Motivated by the study of deceptive strategies, this paper considers the problems of detecting an agent's objective from its partial path and determining an optimal environment to enable such detection. We focus on a scenario where the agent's objective is to reach a particular target state from a set of potential targets, while an observer seeks to correctly identify such a state prior to the agent reaching it. In order to quantify the predictability of the agent's target given the observed path, we introduce the notion of target entropy, where higher entropy implies lower target predictability. The problem of optimal environment design, i.e., optimal target placement, then becomes a minimax problem with target entropy as an objective function. Under the assumption that the agent chooses its path towards its target maximally unpredictably, we consider models of the agent's motion on both discrete and continuous state spaces. Using dynamic programming, we establish a simple way of computing target entropy for the discrete state space. In a continuous state space, we obtain a formula for target entropy by employing geometrical arguments on volumes of hypersimplices. Additionally, we provide an algorithm yielding an optimal environment in a discrete state space, discuss its computational complexity, and provide a computationally simpler approximation that yields a locally optimal environment. We validate our results on a previously developed model of deceptive agent motion.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2020 59th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, CDC 2020
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages5023-5028
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781728174471
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 14 2020
Event59th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, CDC 2020 - Virtual, Jeju Island, Korea, Republic of
Duration: Dec 14 2020Dec 18 2020

Publication series

NameProceedings of the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control
Volume2020-December
ISSN (Print)0743-1546
ISSN (Electronic)2576-2370

Conference

Conference59th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, CDC 2020
Country/TerritoryKorea, Republic of
CityVirtual, Jeju Island
Period12/14/2012/18/20

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Control and Systems Engineering
  • Modeling and Simulation
  • Control and Optimization

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