ThC05 - Resource Allocation in Adversarial Interactions: A Tutorial on Colonel Blotto Games

Resource allocation is a fundamental challenge in control theory, with applications spanning security, surveillance, network control, and market strategy. These problems are often associated with decision-making in adversarial environments, where players compete for control over valued contests. When adversaries are strategic themselves, how should one allocate limited resources to maximize their individual objectives? This tutorial session will examine the emergence of “Colonel Blotto games”, a class of game-theoretic models that aptly represents such scenarios, in the controls literature. In this tutorial session, we will showcase the work of several researchers that have made fundamental contributions in the analysis of Blotto games and their variants. Their work has enabled versatile applications to networked control, cybersecurity, economic competitions, political contests, and defense. We highlight the development of state-of-the-art techniques and discuss emerging directions for researchers to enhance the reach and applicability of these models across diverse problem domains.

Schedule of Talks