Reasoning about Knowledge and Strategies: Epistemic Strategy Logic

In this paper we introduce Epistemic Strategy Logic (ESL), an extension of Strategy Logic with modal operators for individual knowledge. This enhanced framework allows us to represent explicitly and to reason about the knowledge agents have of their own and other agents' strategies. We provide a semantics to ESL in terms of epistemic concurrent game models, and consider the corresponding model checking problem. We show that the complexity of model checking ESL is not worse than (non-epistemic) Strategy LogicComment: In Proceedings SR 2014, arXiv:1404.041

Situation awareness and ability in coalitions

This paper proposes a discussion on the formal links between the Situation Calculus and the semantics of interpreted systems as far as they relate to Higher-Level Information Fusion tasks. Among these tasks Situation Analysis require to be able to reason about the decision processes of coalitions. Indeed in higher levels of information fusion, one not only need to know that a certain proposition is true (or that it has a certain numerical measure attached), but rather needs to model the circumstances under which this validity holds as well as agents' properties and constraints. In a previous paper the authors have proposed to use the Interpreted System semantics as a potential candidate for the unification of all levels of information fusion. In the present work we show how the proposed framework allow to bind reasoning about courses of action and Situation Awareness. We propose in this paper a (1) model of coalition, (2) a model of ability in the situation calculus language and (3) a model of situation awareness in the interpreted systems semantics. Combining the advantages of both Situation Calculus and the Interpreted Systems semantics, we show how the Situation Calculus can be framed into the Interpreted Systems semantics. We illustrate on the example of RAP compilation in a coalition context, how ability and situation awareness interact and what benefit is gained. Finally, we conclude this study with a discussion on possible future works

Complexity and Expressivity of Branching- and Alternating-Time Temporal Logics with Finitely Many Variables

We show that Branching-time temporal logics CTL and CTL*, as well as Alternating-time temporal logics ATL and ATL*, are as semantically expressive in the language with a single propositional variable as they are in the full language, i.e., with an unlimited supply of propositional variables. It follows that satisfiability for CTL, as well as for ATL, with a single variable is EXPTIME-complete, while satisfiability for CTL*, as well as for ATL*, with a single variable is 2EXPTIME-complete,--i.e., for these logics, the satisfiability for formulas with only one variable is as hard as satisfiability for arbitrary formulas.Comment: Prefinal version of the published pape

Model-Checking an Alternating-time Temporal Logic with Knowledge, Imperfect Information, Perfect Recall and Communicating Coalitions

We present a variant of ATL with distributed knowledge operators based on a synchronous and perfect recall semantics. The coalition modalities in this logic are based on partial observation of the full history, and incorporate a form of cooperation between members of the coalition in which agents issue their actions based on the distributed knowledge, for that coalition, of the system history. We show that model-checking is decidable for this logic. The technique utilizes two variants of games with imperfect information and partially observable objectives, as well as a subset construction for identifying states whose histories are indistinguishable to the considered coalition

The Complexity of Synthesizing Uniform Strategies

We investigate uniformity properties of strategies. These properties involve sets of plays in order to express useful constraints on strategies that are not \mu-calculus definable. Typically, we can state that a strategy is observation-based. We propose a formal language to specify uniformity properties, interpreted over two-player turn-based arenas equipped with a binary relation between plays. This way, we capture e.g. games with winning conditions expressible in epistemic temporal logic, whose underlying equivalence relation between plays reflects the observational capabilities of agents (for example, synchronous perfect recall). Our framework naturally generalizes many other situations from the literature. We establish that the problem of synthesizing strategies under uniformity constraints based on regular binary relations between plays is non-elementary complete.Comment: In Proceedings SR 2013, arXiv:1303.007

Reducing Validity in Epistemic ATL to Validity in Epistemic CTL

We propose a validity preserving translation from a subset of epistemic Alternating-time Temporal Logic (ATL) to epistemic Computation Tree Logic (CTL). The considered subset of epistemic ATL is known to have the finite model property and decidable model-checking. This entails the decidability of validity but the implied algorithm is unfeasible. Reducing the validity problem to that in a corresponding system of CTL makes the techniques for automated deduction for that logic available for the handling of the apparently more complex system of ATL.Comment: In Proceedings SR 2013, arXiv:1303.007

MCMAS-SLK: A Model Checker for the Verification of Strategy Logic Specifications

We introduce MCMAS-SLK, a BDD-based model checker for the verification of systems against specifications expressed in a novel, epistemic variant of strategy logic. We give syntax and semantics of the specification language and introduce a labelling algorithm for epistemic and strategy logic modalities. We provide details of the checker which can also be used for synthesising agents' strategies so that a specification is satisfied by the system. We evaluate the efficiency of the implementation by discussing the results obtained for the dining cryptographers protocol and a variant of the cake-cutting problem