5,540 research outputs found
Rational physical agent reasoning beyond logic
The paper addresses the problem of defining a theoretical physical agent framework that satisfies practical requirements of programmability by non-programmer engineers and at the same time permitting fast realtime operation of agents on digital computer networks. The objective of the new framework is to enable the satisfaction of performance requirements on autonomous vehicles and robots in space exploration, deep underwater exploration, defense reconnaissance, automated manufacturing and household automation
Proving Abstractions of Dynamical Systems through Numerical Simulations
A key question that arises in rigorous analysis of cyberphysical systems
under attack involves establishing whether or not the attacked system deviates
significantly from the ideal allowed behavior. This is the problem of deciding
whether or not the ideal system is an abstraction of the attacked system. A
quantitative variation of this question can capture how much the attacked
system deviates from the ideal. Thus, algorithms for deciding abstraction
relations can help measure the effect of attacks on cyberphysical systems and
to develop attack detection strategies. In this paper, we present a decision
procedure for proving that one nonlinear dynamical system is a quantitative
abstraction of another. Directly computing the reach sets of these nonlinear
systems are undecidable in general and reach set over-approximations do not
give a direct way for proving abstraction. Our procedure uses (possibly
inaccurate) numerical simulations and a model annotation to compute tight
approximations of the observable behaviors of the system and then uses these
approximations to decide on abstraction. We show that the procedure is sound
and that it is guaranteed to terminate under reasonable robustness assumptions
Complexity, BioComplexity, the Connectionist Conjecture and Ontology of Complexity\ud
This paper develops and integrates major ideas and concepts on complexity and biocomplexity - the connectionist conjecture, universal ontology of complexity, irreducible complexity of totality & inherent randomness, perpetual evolution of information, emergence of criticality and equivalence of symmetry & complexity. This paper introduces the Connectionist Conjecture which states that the one and only representation of Totality is the connectionist one i.e. in terms of nodes and edges. This paper also introduces an idea of Universal Ontology of Complexity and develops concepts in that direction. The paper also develops ideas and concepts on the perpetual evolution of information, irreducibility and computability of totality, all in the context of the Connectionist Conjecture. The paper indicates that the control and communication are the prime functionals that are responsible for the symmetry and complexity of complex phenomenon. The paper takes the stand that the phenomenon of life (including its evolution) is probably the nearest to what we can describe with the term “complexity”. The paper also assumes that signaling and communication within the living world and of the living world with the environment creates the connectionist structure of the biocomplexity. With life and its evolution as the substrate, the paper develops ideas towards the ontology of complexity. The paper introduces new complexity theoretic interpretations of fundamental biomolecular parameters. The paper also develops ideas on the methodology to determine the complexity of “true” complex phenomena.\u
Simulation and Bisimulation over Multiple Time Scales in a Behavioral Setting
This paper introduces a new behavioral system model with distinct external
and internal signals possibly evolving on different time scales. This allows to
capture abstraction processes or signal aggregation in the context of control
and verification of large scale systems. For this new system model different
notions of simulation and bisimulation are derived, ensuring that they are,
respectively, preorders and equivalence relations for the system class under
consideration. These relations can capture a wide selection of similarity
notions available in the literature. This paper therefore provides a suitable
framework for their comparisonComment: Submitted to 22nd Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automatio
Aggregation and Control of Populations of Thermostatically Controlled Loads by Formal Abstractions
This work discusses a two-step procedure, based on formal abstractions, to
generate a finite-space stochastic dynamical model as an aggregation of the
continuous temperature dynamics of a homogeneous population of Thermostatically
Controlled Loads (TCL). The temperature of a single TCL is described by a
stochastic difference equation and the TCL status (ON, OFF) by a deterministic
switching mechanism. The procedure is formal as it allows the exact
quantification of the error introduced by the abstraction -- as such it builds
and improves on a known, earlier approximation technique in the literature.
Further, the contribution discusses the extension to the case of a
heterogeneous population of TCL by means of two approaches resulting in the
notion of approximate abstractions. It moreover investigates the problem of
global (population-level) regulation and load balancing for the case of TCL
that are dependent on a control input. The procedure is tested on a case study
and benchmarked against the mentioned alternative approach in the literature.Comment: 40 pages, 21 figures; the paper generalizes the result of conference
publication: S. Esmaeil Zadeh Soudjani and A. Abate, "Aggregation of
Thermostatically Controlled Loads by Formal Abstractions," Proceedings of the
European Control Conference 2013, pp. 4232-4237. version 2: added references
for section
Quantitative Approximation of the Probability Distribution of a Markov Process by Formal Abstractions
The goal of this work is to formally abstract a Markov process evolving in
discrete time over a general state space as a finite-state Markov chain, with
the objective of precisely approximating its state probability distribution in
time, which allows for its approximate, faster computation by that of the
Markov chain. The approach is based on formal abstractions and employs an
arbitrary finite partition of the state space of the Markov process, and the
computation of average transition probabilities between partition sets. The
abstraction technique is formal, in that it comes with guarantees on the
introduced approximation that depend on the diameters of the partitions: as
such, they can be tuned at will. Further in the case of Markov processes with
unbounded state spaces, a procedure for precisely truncating the state space
within a compact set is provided, together with an error bound that depends on
the asymptotic properties of the transition kernel of the original process. The
overall abstraction algorithm, which practically hinges on piecewise constant
approximations of the density functions of the Markov process, is extended to
higher-order function approximations: these can lead to improved error bounds
and associated lower computational requirements. The approach is practically
tested to compute probabilistic invariance of the Markov process under study,
and is compared to a known alternative approach from the literature.Comment: 29 pages, Journal of Logical Methods in Computer Scienc
Language-based Abstractions for Dynamical Systems
Ordinary differential equations (ODEs) are the primary means to modelling
dynamical systems in many natural and engineering sciences. The number of
equations required to describe a system with high heterogeneity limits our
capability of effectively performing analyses. This has motivated a large body
of research, across many disciplines, into abstraction techniques that provide
smaller ODE systems while preserving the original dynamics in some appropriate
sense. In this paper we give an overview of a recently proposed
computer-science perspective to this problem, where ODE reduction is recast to
finding an appropriate equivalence relation over ODE variables, akin to
classical models of computation based on labelled transition systems.Comment: In Proceedings QAPL 2017, arXiv:1707.0366
Compositional abstraction and safety synthesis using overlapping symbolic models
In this paper, we develop a compositional approach to abstraction and safety
synthesis for a general class of discrete time nonlinear systems. Our approach
makes it possible to define a symbolic abstraction by composing a set of
symbolic subsystems that are overlapping in the sense that they can share some
common state variables. We develop compositional safety synthesis techniques
using such overlapping symbolic subsystems. Comparisons, in terms of
conservativeness and of computational complexity, between abstractions and
controllers obtained from different system decompositions are provided.
Numerical experiments show that the proposed approach for symbolic control
synthesis enables a significant complexity reduction with respect to the
centralized approach, while reducing the conservatism with respect to
compositional approaches using non-overlapping subsystems
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