IMADA - Department of Mathematics and Computer Science |
We consider the problem of retrieving information from a closed theater with largely unknown characteristics (e.g. a disaster scene, a money-laundering operation, a compromised computer network). "Agents" enter the theater and make observations. In the three theaters above, the agents can be people (or robots), euros with embedded mu-chips, network packets, respectively. Agents are assumed to have constant memory and can only engage in pair-wise communication during unpredictable encounters. Eventually some lucky agent makes it out of the theater alive (not an easy task). We would like this agent to contain global information. We define a new formal model of distributed computation that captures the above scenario. We give examples of computable predicates within this model and discuss open problems. This is joint work with Dana Angluin, James Aspnes, Zoe Diamadi, and Michael Fischer. Host: Joan Boyar SDU HOME | IMADA HOME | Previous Page Last modified: Wed Aug 3 10:24:12 CEST 2005 Joan Boyar (joan@imada.sdu.dk) |