11,068 research outputs found
Model Checking Spatial Logics for Closure Spaces
Spatial aspects of computation are becoming increasingly relevant in Computer
Science, especially in the field of collective adaptive systems and when
dealing with systems distributed in physical space. Traditional formal
verification techniques are well suited to analyse the temporal evolution of
programs; however, properties of space are typically not taken into account
explicitly. We present a topology-based approach to formal verification of
spatial properties depending upon physical space. We define an appropriate
logic, stemming from the tradition of topological interpretations of modal
logics, dating back to earlier logicians such as Tarski, where modalities
describe neighbourhood. We lift the topological definitions to the more general
setting of closure spaces, also encompassing discrete, graph-based structures.
We extend the framework with a spatial surrounded operator, a propagation
operator and with some collective operators. The latter are interpreted over
arbitrary sets of points instead of individual points in space. We define
efficient model checking procedures, both for the individual and the collective
spatial fragments of the logic and provide a proof-of-concept tool
Modal Logics of Topological Relations
Logical formalisms for reasoning about relations between spatial regions play
a fundamental role in geographical information systems, spatial and constraint
databases, and spatial reasoning in AI. In analogy with Halpern and Shoham's
modal logic of time intervals based on the Allen relations, we introduce a
family of modal logics equipped with eight modal operators that are interpreted
by the Egenhofer-Franzosa (or RCC8) relations between regions in topological
spaces such as the real plane. We investigate the expressive power and
computational complexity of logics obtained in this way. It turns out that our
modal logics have the same expressive power as the two-variable fragment of
first-order logic, but are exponentially less succinct. The complexity ranges
from (undecidable and) recursively enumerable to highly undecidable, where the
recursively enumerable logics are obtained by considering substructures of
structures induced by topological spaces. As our undecidability results also
capture logics based on the real line, they improve upon undecidability results
for interval temporal logics by Halpern and Shoham. We also analyze modal
logics based on the five RCC5 relations, with similar results regarding the
expressive power, but weaker results regarding the complexity
Labelled transition systems as a Stone space
A fully abstract and universal domain model for modal transition systems and
refinement is shown to be a maximal-points space model for the bisimulation
quotient of labelled transition systems over a finite set of events. In this
domain model we prove that this quotient is a Stone space whose compact,
zero-dimensional, and ultra-metrizable Hausdorff topology measures the degree
of bisimilarity such that image-finite labelled transition systems are dense.
Using this compactness we show that the set of labelled transition systems that
refine a modal transition system, its ''set of implementations'', is compact
and derive a compactness theorem for Hennessy-Milner logic on such
implementation sets. These results extend to systems that also have partially
specified state propositions, unify existing denotational, operational, and
metric semantics on partial processes, render robust consistency measures for
modal transition systems, and yield an abstract interpretation of compact sets
of labelled transition systems as Scott-closed sets of modal transition
systems.Comment: Changes since v2: Metadata updat
Specifying and Verifying Properties of Space - Extended Version
The interplay between process behaviour and spatial aspects of computation
has become more and more relevant in Computer Science, especially in the field
of collective adaptive systems, but also, more generally, when dealing with
systems distributed in physical space. Traditional verification techniques are
well suited to analyse the temporal evolution of programs; properties of space
are typically not explicitly taken into account. We propose a methodology to
verify properties depending upon physical space. We define an appropriate
logic, stemming from the tradition of topological interpretations of modal
logics, dating back to earlier logicians such as Tarski, where modalities
describe neighbourhood. We lift the topological definitions to a more general
setting, also encompassing discrete, graph-based structures. We further extend
the framework with a spatial until operator, and define an efficient model
checking procedure, implemented in a proof-of-concept tool.Comment: Presented at "Theoretical Computer Science" 2014, Rom
Combining Spatial and Temporal Logics: Expressiveness vs. Complexity
In this paper, we construct and investigate a hierarchy of spatio-temporal
formalisms that result from various combinations of propositional spatial and
temporal logics such as the propositional temporal logic PTL, the spatial
logics RCC-8, BRCC-8, S4u and their fragments. The obtained results give a
clear picture of the trade-off between expressiveness and computational
realisability within the hierarchy. We demonstrate how different combining
principles as well as spatial and temporal primitives can produce NP-, PSPACE-,
EXPSPACE-, 2EXPSPACE-complete, and even undecidable spatio-temporal logics out
of components that are at most NP- or PSPACE-complete
Approximate reasoning for real-time probabilistic processes
We develop a pseudo-metric analogue of bisimulation for generalized
semi-Markov processes. The kernel of this pseudo-metric corresponds to
bisimulation; thus we have extended bisimulation for continuous-time
probabilistic processes to a much broader class of distributions than
exponential distributions. This pseudo-metric gives a useful handle on
approximate reasoning in the presence of numerical information -- such as
probabilities and time -- in the model. We give a fixed point characterization
of the pseudo-metric. This makes available coinductive reasoning principles for
reasoning about distances. We demonstrate that our approach is insensitive to
potentially ad hoc articulations of distance by showing that it is intrinsic to
an underlying uniformity. We provide a logical characterization of this
uniformity using a real-valued modal logic. We show that several quantitative
properties of interest are continuous with respect to the pseudo-metric. Thus,
if two processes are metrically close, then observable quantitative properties
of interest are indeed close.Comment: Preliminary version appeared in QEST 0
- …