Symbolic Synthesis of Knowledge-based Program Implementations with Synchronous Semantics

This paper deals with the automated synthesis of implementations of knowledge-based programs with respect to two synchronous semantics (clock and synchronous perfect recall). An approach to the synthesis problem based on the use of symbolic representations is described. The method has been implemented as an extension to the model checker MCK. Two applications of the implemented synthesis system are presented: the muddy children puzzle (where performance is compared to an explicit state method for a related problem implemented in the model checker DEMO), and a knowledge-based program for a dynamic leader election problem in a ring of processes

The complexity of approximations for epistemic synthesis (extended abstract)

Epistemic protocol specifications allow programs, for settings in which multiple agents act with incomplete information, to be described in terms of how actions are related to what the agents know. They are a variant of the knowledge-based programs of Fagin et al [Distributed Computing, 1997], motivated by the complexity of synthesizing implementations in that framework. The paper proposes an approach to the synthesis of implementations of epistemic protocol specifications, that reduces the problem of finding an implementation to a sequence of model checking problems in approximations of the ultimate system being synthesized. A number of ways to construct such approximations is considered, and these are studied for the complexity of the associated model checking problems. The outcome of the study is the identification of the best approximations with the property of being PTIME implementable.Comment: In Proceedings SYNT 2015, arXiv:1602.0078