TY - GEN
T1 - The role of common "context" in signaling
AU - Grover, Pulkit
AU - Langbort, Cedric
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - In order to signal effectively, is it sufficient for decentralized agents to share a signaling protocol, a common language? In this paper, we argue that the agents also need a common signaling "context" that can depend on the environment. Paralleling traditional communication, where mapping of information-sequence to codewords can be thought of as a "language", the meaning attached to points in the state-space defines a signaling-language. In this framework, the coordinate-axes of an agent can be viewed as its signaling-context. By investigating the impact of context-misalignment in the minimalist signaling problem, the Witsenhausen counterexample, we show that significant context-misalignment can lead to lack of coordination despite agreement on the signaling-language. While Witsenhausen's counterexample is a single-shot problem, decentralized agents often act for longer time-horizons. By formulating a multi-shot extension of Witsenhausen's counterexample, we show that the agents can arrive at a common context by observing the costs arising due to their actions at previous time-steps, and are then able to use their common language to coordinate effectively.
AB - In order to signal effectively, is it sufficient for decentralized agents to share a signaling protocol, a common language? In this paper, we argue that the agents also need a common signaling "context" that can depend on the environment. Paralleling traditional communication, where mapping of information-sequence to codewords can be thought of as a "language", the meaning attached to points in the state-space defines a signaling-language. In this framework, the coordinate-axes of an agent can be viewed as its signaling-context. By investigating the impact of context-misalignment in the minimalist signaling problem, the Witsenhausen counterexample, we show that significant context-misalignment can lead to lack of coordination despite agreement on the signaling-language. While Witsenhausen's counterexample is a single-shot problem, decentralized agents often act for longer time-horizons. By formulating a multi-shot extension of Witsenhausen's counterexample, we show that the agents can arrive at a common context by observing the costs arising due to their actions at previous time-steps, and are then able to use their common language to coordinate effectively.
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U2 - 10.1109/CDC.2011.6161445
DO - 10.1109/CDC.2011.6161445
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84860671462
SN - 9781612848006
T3 - Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control
SP - 5535
EP - 5540
BT - 2011 50th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference, CDC-ECC 2011
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 2011 50th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference, CDC-ECC 2011
Y2 - 12 December 2011 through 15 December 2011
ER -