Proximity-Grounded Multi-Party Coordination

Mechanism

A coordination pattern declares the set of participants required to admit a coordination together with a spatial proximity window and a temporal proximity window that those participants must satisfy. The spatial proximity window admits a plurality of forms, including a radio-range window defined by mesh-protocol reachability, a polygonal window defined by governance-policy-defined boundaries, a radius-from-point window, a topology-bound window, a sensor-coverage window defined by overlap of both parties' sensor coverage, a vehicle-proximity window defined by inter-vehicle range, a credentialed-venue window, or a composite of these. Each participant runs in a mesh that produces governance-credentialed coordinate and time observations through inter-agent ranging; those positions are determined cooperatively through multilateration from admitted range observations and anchor positions, with each contributing range observation governance-chain-credentialed in the resulting record.

When a coordination is initiated, each of the N authority-credentialed parties, where N is three or more, contributes a governance-credentialed observation drawn from its mesh-derived position and time. A spatial-proximity evaluator verifies participant spatial proximity per the declared window, and a temporal-proximity evaluator verifies participant temporal proximity, alongside a per-participant admissibility evaluator applying the composite admissibility evaluator to each contributed observation. A proximity-window violation produces a governance-chain-preserving rejection that records the violation type, the contributing observations, the measured and required windows, and the governance-policy-defined rejection consequences. The coordination record that emerges from a successful admission carries the per-participant authority attestations and the spatial and temporal proximity attestations together, with each participant admission, attestation, and outcome determination recorded in the governance chain lineage field for later audit.

The mechanism is distinct from multi-signature cryptographic schemes, which aggregate signatures without attaching authority-chain semantics or grounding the signers in physical reality, and from multi-party computation protocols, which enable privacy-preserving joint computation without coordination semantics. Here, participant positions are derived from governance-credentialed inter-agent ranging in which each range observation is authenticated through the governance-chain continuity identity and admitted through the composite admissibility evaluator. An adversarial-range rejection mechanism rejects spoofed, injected, or otherwise inadmissible range observations, so a single compromised endpoint cannot inject a position consistent with the cooperatively determined mesh estimate.

The coordinate primitive propagates ranging precision and ranging-covariance through the localization chain, producing per-position uncertainty estimates, and resolves ambiguity when multilateration admits more than one solution. Each range observation, localization event, uncertainty update, ambiguity resolution, and rejection event is recorded in the coordinate-lineage field, so the derivation chain of every admitted position is deterministically reconstructable. A coordination admitted under a marginally consistent position estimate is therefore reconstructable in audit from its recorded lineage rather than being treated as out-of-band metadata.

Operating Parameters

A coordination pattern declares its proximity windows per deployment. The spatial proximity window is selected from the disclosed forms: a radio-range window defined by mesh-protocol reachability, a polygonal window, a radius-from-point window, a topology-bound window, a sensor-coverage window, a vehicle-proximity window defined by inter-vehicle range for moving coordinations, a credentialed-venue window defined by the spatial extent of a governance-credentialed venue, or a composite of these. The temporal proximity window is likewise selected from disclosed forms: an absolute-duration window specified as a time interval from the first observation, a relative-event window, a multi-event window, an authority-clock window defined by governance-credentialed authority timing, an operational-context window varying by coordination type, an adaptive window adjusted by class and historical timing, or a composite. Spatial-window verification uses mesh-derived coordinates with governance-chain-preserving position lineage, and temporal-window verification uses mesh-derived time with governance-chain-preserving temporal lineage. The specific magnitudes of these windows are governance-policy-defined per deployment; the disclosure does not fix them.

Operationally, the mesh supplies the coordinate and time inputs through inter-agent ranging across a plurality of ranging modalities integrated into a single coordinate graph. Because the coordinate primitive maintains positions cooperatively, a coordination admission can be evaluated against the current mesh-derived estimate. The disclosure does not recite a specific ranging modality, ranging rate, or refresh frequency for the proximity evaluation; the modality and cadence are governance-policy-defined per deployment.

A coordination pattern also governs which observations are admissible. Each contributed observation passes the composite admissibility evaluator and a per-participant authority evaluator verifying the party's authority credential, with credential freshness evaluated so that lapsed or revoked credentials are handled per governance policy. Because each range observation, localization event, uncertainty update, and rejection event is recorded in the coordinate-lineage field, the coordination supports deterministic reconstruction of each position's derivation chain, which serves deployments where after-the-fact reconstruction of the admissibility decision is itself a regulatory requirement.

Alternative Embodiments

In a multi-authority approval embodiment, three or more authority-credentialed parties produce a coordinated outcome through role-differentiated attestations, with the coordination pattern specifying each party's role and the outcome function. The coordination record is later reconstructable against the recorded coordinate and time lineage, and a coordination admitted on observations that fell outside the declared spatial or temporal window is detectable in audit even where the per-participant authority attestations were valid.

In a medical patient-transfer handoff embodiment, clinical lineage transfers across emergency-medical-services, hospital, surgical, post-operative-care, and post-discharge-primary-care authorities. The handoff is recorded as a matched-pair settlement linking a relinquishing-domain authority and a receiving-domain authority, with a cross-authority taxonomy translator reconciling authority context and observation schemas across the boundary and a lineage-continuity preserver ensuring complete provenance remains accessible across the transfer.

In a governed voting embodiment, the coordination-outcome function evaluates contributed observations under a quorum-based resolution pattern, with a weighted-participation mechanism supporting authority-tier-weighted contributions where the deployment so declares. In a federated-contribution aggregation embodiment, multiple parties' observations combine into a single coordinated outcome, with the spatial and temporal proximity windows binding the contributing parties to a governance-policy-defined region and interval rather than to abstract addresses without physical-space grounding.

In an incomplete-ceremony embodiment, a partial-quorum and abandonment handler manages coordination ceremonies that do not assemble their full membership, and a dynamic-membership mechanism supports member replacement during a ceremony. Under network partition, partitioned-operation handling governs how the coordination proceeds, with the outcome-confidence-governed action of the confidence-governed execution primitive modulating downstream action by the confidence of the coordinated outcome.

In a lead-and-follower formation embodiment, the N-party coordination primitive composes with the marker-track transport primitive through platoon coordination, and the spatial proximity window takes the form of a vehicle-proximity window defined by inter-vehicle range for the moving coordination. The coordination composes with intermodal handoff at authority-domain boundaries through the cross-domain coordination handoff mechanism.

Composition

Proximity-grounded coordination composes with the mesh-derived coordinate primitive through spatial-proximity evaluation and with the mesh-derived time primitive through temporal-proximity evaluation, drawing its inputs from them rather than recapitulating them. It composes upward by treating spatial and temporal proximity as admissibility evaluators alongside the per-participant authority evaluator and the composite admissibility evaluator; the coordination primitive runs these uniformly and emits a single admission or rejection record. It composes with the matched-pair settlement primitive through pairwise component settlements within multi-party ceremonies, and it extends the bilateral matched-pair settlement primitive to arbitrary N-party ceremonies.

Downstream, the architecture composes with authority-filtered outcome emission through the observation routing primitive, delivering the coordination record to authorized consumers. Because the spatial and temporal proximity attestations are recorded into the coordination record alongside the per-participant authority attestations, audit queries that filter or aggregate coordination records by spatial-temporal attributes are answered against the same governance-chain lineage, with credentialed lineage and revocation semantics applied uniformly across the admissibility evaluators.

Prior Art Distinction

Prior blockchain consensus protocols require global agreement about shared state across all network participants, whereas the present primitive requires coordination among specific named parties only. Prior multi-signature cryptographic schemes, including m-of-n and threshold signatures, aggregate signatures without attaching authority-chain semantics, whereas the present primitive produces governance-credentialed settlements with per-participant authority attribution. Prior voting protocols handle public-choice selection without multi-pattern composition, and prior multi-party computation protocols enable privacy-preserving joint computation without coordination semantics. Most distinctively, prior architectures do not ground coordination in physical spatiotemporal proximity, whereas the present primitive requires participant spatial-temporal proximity, grounding coordination in physical reality, and supports cross-domain coordination handoff preserving governance continuity across authority boundaries.

Disclosure Scope

This article describes subject matter disclosed in U.S. Provisional Application No. 64/049,409. The disclosure covers an N-party coordination settlement primitive in which three or more authority-credentialed parties produce a coordinated outcome through role-differentiated attestations, with a governance-policy-defined spatial proximity window and temporal proximity window evaluated against mesh-derived coordinate and time observations as a precondition for admitting a coordination, in which the proximity attestation is recorded into the coordination record and reconstructable in audit, and in which proximity admissibility is composed with per-participant authority and composite admissibility under a uniform evaluator. The disclosure includes the coordination-pattern plurality, weighted participation, multi-round coordination, Byzantine-robust coordination tolerating a governance-policy-defined fraction of adversarial or failed participants, partial-quorum and abandonment handling, dynamic membership, cross-pattern composition, and cross-domain coordination handoff, with cross-domain handoff instances including intermodal freight handoff, airspace-transition handoff, and medical patient-transfer handoff.