Partially ordered two-way Büchi automata

We introduce partially ordered two-way Büchi automata over infinite words. As for finite words, the nondeterministic variant recognizes the fragment Sigma2 of first-order logic FO[<] and the deterministic version yields the Delta2-definable omega-languages. As a byproduct of our results, we show that deterministic partially ordered two-way Büchi automata are effectively closed under Boolean operations. In addition, we have coNP-completeness results for the emptiness problem and the inclusion problem over deterministic partially ordered two-way Büchi automata

Partially Ordered Two-way B\"uchi Automata

We introduce partially ordered two-way B\"uchi automata and characterize their expressive power in terms of fragments of first-order logic FO[<]. Partially ordered two-way B\"uchi automata are B\"uchi automata which can change the direction in which the input is processed with the constraint that whenever a state is left, it is never re-entered again. Nondeterministic partially ordered two-way B\"uchi automata coincide with the first-order fragment Sigma2. Our main contribution is that deterministic partially ordered two-way B\"uchi automata are expressively complete for the first-order fragment Delta2. As an intermediate step, we show that deterministic partially ordered two-way B\"uchi automata are effectively closed under Boolean operations. A small model property yields coNP-completeness of the emptiness problem and the inclusion problem for deterministic partially ordered two-way B\"uchi automata.Comment: The results of this paper were presented at CIAA 2010; University of Stuttgart, Computer Scienc

Wadge Degrees of ω\omega-Languages of Petri Nets

We prove that $\omega$-languages of (non-deterministic) Petri nets and $\omega$-languages of (non-deterministic) Turing machines have the same topological complexity: the Borel and Wadge hierarchies of the class of $\omega$-languages of (non-deterministic) Petri nets are equal to the Borel and Wadge hierarchies of the class of $\omega$-languages of (non-deterministic) Turing machines which also form the class of effective analytic sets. In particular, for each non-null recursive ordinal $\alpha < \omega\_1^{{\rm CK}}$ there exist some ${\bf \Sigma}^0\_\alpha$-complete and some ${\bf \Pi}^0\_\alpha$-complete $\omega$-languages of Petri nets, and the supremum of the set of Borel ranks of $\omega$-languages of Petri nets is the ordinal $\gamma\_2^1$, which is strictly greater than the first non-recursive ordinal $\omega\_1^{{\rm CK}}$. We also prove that there are some ${\bf \Sigma}\_1^1$-complete, hence non-Borel, $\omega$-languages of Petri nets, and that it is consistent with ZFC that there exist some $\omega$-languages of Petri nets which are neither Borel nor ${\bf \Sigma}\_1^1$-complete. This answers the question of the topological complexity of $\omega$-languages of (non-deterministic) Petri nets which was left open in [DFR14,FS14].Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:0712.1359, arXiv:0804.326

Determinising Parity Automata

Parity word automata and their determinisation play an important role in automata and game theory. We discuss a determinisation procedure for nondeterministic parity automata through deterministic Rabin to deterministic parity automata. We prove that the intermediate determinisation to Rabin automata is optimal. We show that the resulting determinisation to parity automata is optimal up to a small constant. Moreover, the lower bound refers to the more liberal Streett acceptance. We thus show that determinisation to Streett would not lead to better bounds than determinisation to parity. As a side-result, this optimality extends to the determinisation of B\"uchi automata

B\"uchi VASS recognise w-languages that are Sigma^1_1 - complete

This short note exhibits an example of a Sigma^1_1-complete language that can be recognised by a one blind counter B\"uchi automaton (or equivalently a B\"uchi VASS with only one place)

A Component-oriented Framework for Autonomous Agents

The design of a complex system warrants a compositional methodology, i.e., composing simple components to obtain a larger system that exhibits their collective behavior in a meaningful way. We propose an automaton-based paradigm for compositional design of such systems where an action is accompanied by one or more preferences. At run-time, these preferences provide a natural fallback mechanism for the component, while at design-time they can be used to reason about the behavior of the component in an uncertain physical world. Using structures that tell us how to compose preferences and actions, we can compose formal representations of individual components or agents to obtain a representation of the composed system. We extend Linear Temporal Logic with two unary connectives that reflect the compositional structure of the actions, and show how it can be used to diagnose undesired behavior by tracing the falsification of a specification back to one or more culpable components

Permutation Games for the Weakly Aconjunctive μ\mu-Calculus

We introduce a natural notion of limit-deterministic parity automata and present a method that uses such automata to construct satisfiability games for the weakly aconjunctive fragment of the $\mu$-calculus. To this end we devise a method that determinizes limit-deterministic parity automata of size $n$ with $k$ priorities through limit-deterministic B\"uchi automata to deterministic parity automata of size $\mathcal{O}((nk)!)$ and with $\mathcal{O}(nk)$ priorities. The construction relies on limit-determinism to avoid the full complexity of the Safra/Piterman-construction by using partial permutations of states in place of Safra-Trees. By showing that limit-deterministic parity automata can be used to recognize unsuccessful branches in pre-tableaux for the weakly aconjunctive $\mu$-calculus, we obtain satisfiability games of size $\mathcal{O}((nk)!)$ with $\mathcal{O}(nk)$ priorities for weakly aconjunctive input formulas of size $n$ and alternation-depth $k$. A prototypical implementation that employs a tableau-based global caching algorithm to solve these games on-the-fly shows promising initial results