11 research outputs found
Reachability analysis of linear hybrid systems via block decomposition
Reachability analysis aims at identifying states reachable by a system within
a given time horizon. This task is known to be computationally expensive for
linear hybrid systems. Reachability analysis works by iteratively applying
continuous and discrete post operators to compute states reachable according to
continuous and discrete dynamics, respectively. In this paper, we enhance both
of these operators and make sure that most of the involved computations are
performed in low-dimensional state space. In particular, we improve the
continuous-post operator by performing computations in high-dimensional state
space only for time intervals relevant for the subsequent application of the
discrete-post operator. Furthermore, the new discrete-post operator performs
low-dimensional computations by leveraging the structure of the guard and
assignment of a considered transition. We illustrate the potential of our
approach on a number of challenging benchmarks.Comment: Accepted at EMSOFT 202
Reach Set Approximation through Decomposition with Low-dimensional Sets and High-dimensional Matrices
Approximating the set of reachable states of a dynamical system is an
algorithmic yet mathematically rigorous way to reason about its safety.
Although progress has been made in the development of efficient algorithms for
affine dynamical systems, available algorithms still lack scalability to ensure
their wide adoption in the industrial setting. While modern linear algebra
packages are efficient for matrices with tens of thousands of dimensions,
set-based image computations are limited to a few hundred. We propose to
decompose reach set computations such that set operations are performed in low
dimensions, while matrix operations like exponentiation are carried out in the
full dimension. Our method is applicable both in dense- and discrete-time
settings. For a set of standard benchmarks, it shows a speed-up of up to two
orders of magnitude compared to the respective state-of-the art tools, with
only modest losses in accuracy. For the dense-time case, we show an experiment
with more than 10.000 variables, roughly two orders of magnitude higher than
possible with previous approaches
An hybrid system approach to nonlinear optimal control problems
We consider a nonlinear ordinary differential equation and want to control
its behavior so that it reaches a target by minimizing a cost function. Our
approach is to use hybrid systems to solve this problem: the complex dynamic is
replaced by piecewise affine approximations which allow an analytical
resolution. The sequence of affine models then forms a sequence of states of a
hybrid automaton. Given a sequence of states, we introduce an hybrid
approximation of the nonlinear controllable domain and propose a new algorithm
computing a controllable, piecewise convex approximation. The same way the
nonlinear optimal control problem is replaced by an hybrid piecewise affine
one. Stating a hybrid maximum principle suitable to our hybrid model, we deduce
the global structure of the hybrid optimal control steering the system to the
target
On the Trade-off Between Efficiency and Precision of Neural Abstraction
Neural abstractions have been recently introduced as formal approximations of
complex, nonlinear dynamical models. They comprise a neural ODE and a certified
upper bound on the error between the abstract neural network and the concrete
dynamical model. So far neural abstractions have exclusively been obtained as
neural networks consisting entirely of activation functions, resulting
in neural ODE models that have piecewise affine dynamics, and which can be
equivalently interpreted as linear hybrid automata. In this work, we observe
that the utility of an abstraction depends on its use: some scenarios might
require coarse abstractions that are easier to analyse, whereas others might
require more complex, refined abstractions. We therefore consider neural
abstractions of alternative shapes, namely either piecewise constant or
nonlinear non-polynomial (specifically, obtained via sigmoidal activations). We
employ formal inductive synthesis procedures to generate neural abstractions
that result in dynamical models with these semantics. Empirically, we
demonstrate the trade-off that these different neural abstraction templates
have vis-a-vis their precision and synthesis time, as well as the time required
for their safety verification (done via reachability computation). We improve
existing synthesis techniques to enable abstraction of higher-dimensional
models, and additionally discuss the abstraction of complex neural ODEs to
improve the efficiency of reachability analysis for these models.Comment: To appear at QEST 202
Semiotics and Human-Robot Interaction
Keywords: Semi-autonomous robot, human-robot interaction, semiotics. Abstract: This paper describes a robot control architecture supported on a human-robot interaction model obtained directly from semiotics concepts. The architecture is composed of a set of objects defined after a semiotic sign model. Simulation experiments using unicycle robots are presented that illustrate the interactions within a team of robots equipped with skills similar to those used in human-robot interactions.
Abstraction by Projection and Application to Multi-affine Systems
International audienceIn this paper we present an abstraction method for nonlinear continuous systems. The main idea of our method is to project out some continuous variables, say z, and treat them in the dynamics of the remaining variables x as uncertain input. Therefore, the dynamics of x is then described by a differential inclusion. In addition, in order to avoid excessively conservative abstractions, the domains of the projected variables are divided into smaller regions corresponding to different differential inclusions. The final result of our abstraction procedure is a hybrid system of lower dimension with some important properties that guarantee convergence results. The applicability of this abstraction approach depends on the ability to deal with differential inclusions. We then focus on uncertain bilinear systems, a simple yet useful class of nonlinear differential inclusions, and develop a reachability technique using optimal control. The combination of the abstraction method and the reachability analysis technique for bilinear systems allows to treat multi-affine systems, which is illustrated with a biological system