Controls for unstable structures

We study the behavior of several organizations for a market based distributed control of unstable physical systems and show how a hierarchical organization is a reasonable compromise between rapid local responses with simple communication and the use of global knowledge. We also introduce a new control organization the multihierarchy, and show that it uses less power than a hierarchy in achieving stability. The multihierarchy also has a position invariant response that can control disturbances at the appropriate scale and location.