Exploiting limited signalling in Search and Rescue

Search and rescue (SAR) operations are challenging in the absence of a medium of communication between the rescuers and the rescuee. Natural signalling, grounded in rationality, can play a decisive role in achieving rapid and effective mitigation in such rescue scenarios. In our project, we model a particular rescue scenario as a modified asymmetric rendezvous game where limited communication capabilities are present between the two players. We then present optimal signalling policies to be employed by the rescuer in such rescue scnarios.

For a detailed read, my master's thesis can be found here. More concise overviews can be found in some related publications listed below

  1. Hebbar V.; Langbort C. A Stackelberg Signaling Game for Human-UAV Collaboration in a Search-and-Rescue Context. IFAC-PapersOnLine, Volume 53, Issue 5, 2020, DOI:10.1016/j.ifacol.2021.04.186.
  2. Hebbar, V.; Langbort, C. A Model for Tacit Communication in Collaborative Human-UAV Search-and-Rescue. Entropy 2021, 23, 1027. DOI: 10.3390/e23081027
Information Channel

Effect of Social Identity in (Mis)-information Spread.

We seek to study the role social identity -- a person's sense of belonging to a group -- plays in human information consumption. A hallmark of Social Identity Theory (SIT) is the notion of 'status', i.e., an individual's desire to enhance their and their 'in-group's' utility relative to that of an 'out-group'. In the context of belief formation, this comes off as a desire to believe positive news about the in-group and negative news about the out-group, which has been empirically shown to support belief in misinformation and false news. We model this phenomenon as a Stackelberg game being played over an information channel between a news-source (sender) and news-consumer (receiver). We then employ our model to develop and analyze the effect of countermeasures to reduce mis-information levels among receivers.

For more information one can refer the papers below.

  1. Hebbar, V, and Langbort,C. " On The Role of Social Identity in the Market for (Mis) information." arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.16660 (2022).