Encrypted Cooperative Control Based on Structured Feedback

Cooperative control for multi-agent systems usually requires some communication between the various subsystems. In the resulting networked control system, sensitive data is transmitted and shared between the agents. We propose a novel encrypted control scheme that ensures privacy of the individual agents’ data not only during transmission but also during controller evaluations at neighboring agents. Our control scheme efficiently combines the design of structured feedback laws for multi-agent systems with encrypted controllers for conventional linear systems. The underlying key technology is partial homomorphic encryption, which allows simple computations to be carried out on encrypted data.