4,615 research outputs found
Causality in the Semantics of Esterel: Revisited
We re-examine the challenges concerning causality in the semantics of Esterel
and show that they pertain to the known issues in the semantics of Structured
Operational Semantics with negative premises. We show that the solutions
offered for the semantics of SOS also provide answers to the semantic
challenges of Esterel and that they satisfy the intuitive requirements set by
the language designers
Actors, actions, and initiative in normative system specification
The logic of norms, called deontic logic, has been used to specify normative constraints for information systems. For example, one can specify in deontic logic the constraints that a book borrowed from a library should be returned within three weeks, and that if it is not returned, the library should send a reminder. Thus, the notion of obligation to perform an action arises naturally in system specification. Intuitively, deontic logic presupposes the concept of anactor who undertakes actions and is responsible for fulfilling obligations. However, the concept of an actor has not been formalized until now in deontic logic. We present a formalization in dynamic logic, which allows us to express the actor who initiates actions or choices. This is then combined with a formalization, presented earlier, of deontic logic in dynamic logic, which allows us to specify obligations, permissions, and prohibitions to perform an action. The addition of actors allows us to expresswho has the responsibility to perform an action. In addition to the application of the concept of an actor in deontic logic, we discuss two other applications of actors. First, we show how to generalize an approach taken up by De Nicola and Hennessy, who eliminate from CCS in favor of internal and external choice. We show that our generalization allows a more accurate specification of system behavior than is possible without it. Second, we show that actors can be used to resolve a long-standing paradox of deontic logic, called the paradox of free-choice permission. Towards the end of the paper, we discuss whether the concept of an actor can be combined with that of an object to formalize the concept of active objects
A Survey of Languages for Specifying Dynamics: A Knowledge Engineering Perspective
A number of formal specification languages for knowledge-based systems has been developed. Characteristics for knowledge-based systems are a complex knowledge base and an inference engine which uses this knowledge to solve a given problem. Specification languages for knowledge-based systems have to cover both aspects. They have to provide the means to specify a complex and large amount of knowledge and they have to provide the means to specify the dynamic reasoning behavior of a knowledge-based system. We focus on the second aspect. For this purpose, we survey existing approaches for specifying dynamic behavior in related areas of research. In fact, we have taken approaches for the specification of information systems (Language for Conceptual Modeling and TROLL), approaches for the specification of database updates and logic programming (Transaction Logic and Dynamic Database Logic) and the generic specification framework of abstract state machine
Z2SAL: a translation-based model checker for Z
Despite being widely known and accepted in industry, the Z formal specification language has not so far been well supported by automated verification tools, mostly because of the challenges in handling the abstraction of the language. In this paper we discuss a novel approach to building a model-checker for Z, which involves implementing a translation from Z into SAL, the input language for the Symbolic Analysis Laboratory, a toolset which includes a number of model-checkers and a simulator. The Z2SAL translation deals with a number of important issues, including: mapping unbounded, abstract specifications into bounded, finite models amenable to a BDD-based symbolic checker; converting a non-constructive and piecemeal style of functional specification into a deterministic, automaton-based style of specification; and supporting the rich set-based vocabulary of the Z mathematical toolkit. This paper discusses progress made towards implementing as complete and faithful a translation as possible, while highlighting certain assumptions, respecting certain limitations and making use of available optimisations. The translation is illustrated throughout with examples; and a complete working example is presented, together with performance data
Robust Linear Temporal Logic
Although it is widely accepted that every system should be robust, in the
sense that "small" violations of environment assumptions should lead to "small"
violations of system guarantees, it is less clear how to make this intuitive
notion of robustness mathematically precise. In this paper, we address this
problem by developing a robust version of Linear Temporal Logic (LTL), which we
call robust LTL and denote by rLTL. Formulas in rLTL are syntactically
identical to LTL formulas but are endowed with a many-valued semantics that
encodes robustness. In particular, the semantics of the rLTL formula is such that a "small" violation of the environment
assumption is guaranteed to only produce a "small" violation of the
system guarantee . In addition to introducing rLTL, we study the
verification and synthesis problems for this logic: similarly to LTL, we show
that both problems are decidable, that the verification problem can be solved
in time exponential in the number of subformulas of the rLTL formula at hand,
and that the synthesis problem can be solved in doubly exponential time
LTLf and LDLf Monitoring: A Technical Report
Runtime monitoring is one of the central tasks to provide operational
decision support to running business processes, and check on-the-fly whether
they comply with constraints and rules. We study runtime monitoring of
properties expressed in LTL on finite traces (LTLf) and in its extension LDLf.
LDLf is a powerful logic that captures all monadic second order logic on finite
traces, which is obtained by combining regular expressions and LTLf, adopting
the syntax of propositional dynamic logic (PDL). Interestingly, in spite of its
greater expressivity, LDLf has exactly the same computational complexity of
LTLf. We show that LDLf is able to capture, in the logic itself, not only the
constraints to be monitored, but also the de-facto standard RV-LTL monitors.
This makes it possible to declaratively capture monitoring metaconstraints, and
check them by relying on usual logical services instead of ad-hoc algorithms.
This, in turn, enables to flexibly monitor constraints depending on the
monitoring state of other constraints, e.g., "compensation" constraints that
are only checked when others are detected to be violated. In addition, we
devise a direct translation of LDLf formulas into nondeterministic automata,
avoiding to detour to Buechi automata or alternating automata, and we use it to
implement a monitoring plug-in for the PROM suite
Fluent temporal logic for discrete-time event-based models
Fluent model checking is an automated technique for verifying that an event-based operational model satisfies some state-based declarative properties. The link between the event-based and state-based formalisms is defined through fluents which are state predicates whose value are determined by the occurrences of initiating and terminating events that make the fluents values become true or false, respectively. The existing fluent temporal logic is convenient for reasoning about untimed event-based models but difficult to use for timed models. The paper extends fluent temporal logic with temporal operators for modelling timed properties of discrete-time event-based models. It presents two approaches that differ on whether the properties model the system state after the occurrence of each event or at a fixed time rate. Model checking of timed properties is made possible by translating them into the existing untimed framework. Copyright 2005 ACM
Timed Automata Approach for Motion Planning Using Metric Interval Temporal Logic
In this paper, we consider the robot motion (or task) planning problem under
some given time bounded high level specifications. We use metric interval
temporal logic (MITL), a member of the temporal logic family, to represent the
task specification and then we provide a constructive way to generate a timed
automaton and methods to look for accepting runs on the automaton to find a
feasible motion (or path) sequence for the robot to complete the task.Comment: Full Version for ECC 201
- …