UC San Diego

The deployment of next-generation large-scale multi-agent systems depends critically on the development of efficient inference algorithms that can make it possible. To this end, this dissertation presents novel algorithmic solutions that can handle real-time noisy data, heterogeneous agents, time-varying communication networks, and partial storage, all with convergence guarantees. Our approach relies on the formulation of distributed estimation and inference tasks as an online optimization problem over probability spaces. With appropriate geometry, we design Bayesian algorithms using the known priors and likelihoods, and provide distributional convergence guarantees for agent estimates.

Further, we expand the scope of their application to accommodate time-varying broadcast networks, and relax the requirements on the confidence bounds on sampled data likelihoods. This solution offers an online distributed algorithm accommodating arbitrary likelihood weights, with almost sure convergence guarantees. Exponential convergence guarantees are provided for the estimated probability ratio, and demonstrated through applications such as a distributed Gaussian filter and a distributed version of particle filters for cooperative localization and parameter estimation problems. To learn posteriors with non-conjugate likelihoods and priors, we introduce a novel concept called distributed evidence lower bound (DELBO) to utilize variational inference to learn optimal beliefs over unknown parameters. This development leads to an online Gaussian estimator capable of handling arbitrary differentiable likelihoods, ideal for heterogeneous agents. To enable estimation over a limited set of unknown hypotheses, we present a discrete marginal estimation algorithm. To set this up, we solve a NP-hard problem matching information maximizing connected subgraphs to each unknown hypothesis. A provably correct algorithm with asymptotic convergence guarantees is then described to identify the optimal hypothesis for given sensor assignments. We extend this estimation problem to relevant variables setting in continuous space. To solve this, we introduce a novel mixing approach merging neighbor marginals on shared variables, and prove asymptotic convergence to the marginal consensus manifold. Further, under additional variable independence, the algorithm is guaranteed to converge almost surely. The Gaussian version of the algorithm is compared with other methods, showcasing its efficiency in cooperative estimation problems. Another version based on variational inference is applied to distributed mapping with notable storage and communication savings.