A market-based formulation of sensor-actuator network coordination

That is, the system operates most efficiently when the individuals involved act autonomously based on local information. Given the scale at which such economies operate, the problem of coordinating the actions of all the participants would be intractable without this compartmentalization of data and control. However, it is not the case that there is no communication at all, for without any transfer of information there could be no coordinated activity in the system. Rather the participants in the economy communicate constantly, but through a remarkably efficient medium: price. All information regarding the availability and value of a resource is compressed into a single linear comparator, allowing rational efficient decisions regarding economic transactions. For example, when buying an avocado at the grocery store, we may not know that a drought recently devastated many crops or that avocados are extremely popular right now, but we do know that the store is charging $5 per avocado and we make our buying decision based on that information. We need not take into account the complex (and largely irrelevant) market forces behind the price. As we search for design methodologies that allow coordination in distributed sensor-actuator networks of a scale comparable to human economies, we take inspiration from the price-based market model. The problems central to economics and synthetic network control are extremely similar. In fact, the fundamental issue in both areas is resource allocation: how should the available resources be distributed among the members of the group?