Experimental Evaluation of a Decentralized Protocol for Emergent Heartbeat Synchronization

Heartbeat synchronization, where agents emit short, periodic, near-simultaneous flashes, is achieved as an emergent behavior of the multi-agent system through a novel decentralized protocol. The proposed protocol operates in large multi-agent systems without requiring agents to share a global frequency or phase. Agents interact iteratively with randomly selected peers, pausing for a random interval before triggering each interaction. Starting from random states, agents update their states through pairwise interactions and continuously emit light when their state meets a condition. Two emergent properties of these flashes are studied: the flash period, which is the interval between consecutive flashes, and the flash duration, which is the duration of each flash. Experiments conducted using a custom-built simulator provide strong empirical evidence that the protocol induces a sufficiently regular flash period and a sufficiently short flash duration to enable effective heartbeat synchronization in real-world applications.