Interactions Among Heterogeneous Manipulative Actors in Distributed Decision-Making Processes: Static and Dynamic Analysis

Distributed decision-making processes with two types of manipulative actors, which enact feedback controls to alter the process dynamics, are modeled and analyzed. The main contribution of the work is to evaluate the interplay among the manipulative actors in deciding: 1) the asymptotic decisions reached by the agents and 2) the network's transient dynamics. In particular, the dependence of the asymptotic opinions on the network's topology and the manipulative actors' control schemes is characterized. Then, the impacts of the actors' control schemes on the intrinsic settling dynamics of the network, as well on other actors' transfer functions, is determined. Finally, an example is presented to illustrate the results. The key finding is that asymptotics and transients both show a sophisticated spatial dependence on the relative locations of manipulated agents within the network.