Homomorphic Encryption-Enabled Distance-Based Distributed Formation Control with Distance Mismatch Estimators

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel approach using fully homomorphic encryption for privacy-preserving distributed formation control in multi-agent systems, enabling control computations on encrypted data without resets, and demonstrating convergence despite errors.

Contribution

It introduces a homomorphic encryption-based framework for distributed control that avoids reset mechanisms and maintains privacy of local agent data.

Findings

Formation converges to desired shape despite encryption errors

Control computation on encrypted data is feasible without resets

Framework preserves agent data privacy during control process

Abstract

This paper considers the use of fully homomorphic encryption for the realisation of distributed formation control of multi-agent systems via edge computer. In our proposed framework, the distributed control computation in the edge computer uses only the encrypted data without the need for a reset mechanism that is commonly required to avoid error accumulation. Simulation results show that, despite the use of encrypted data on the controller and errors introduced by the quantization process prior to the encryption, the formation is able to converge to the desired shape. The proposed architecture offers insight on the mechanism for realising distributed control computation in an edge/cloud computer while preserving the privacy of local information coming from each agent.