Discounting in LTL

In recent years, there is growing need and interest in formalizing and reasoning about the quality of software and hardware systems. As opposed to traditional verification, where one handles the question of whether a system satisfies, or not, a given specification, reasoning about quality addresses the question of \emph{how well} the system satisfies the specification. One direction in this effort is to refine the "eventually" operators of temporal logic to {\em discounting operators}: the satisfaction value of a specification is a value in $[0,1]$, where the longer it takes to fulfill eventuality requirements, the smaller the satisfaction value is. In this paper we introduce an augmentation by discounting of Linear Temporal Logic (LTL), and study it, as well as its combination with propositional quality operators. We show that one can augment LTL with an arbitrary set of discounting functions, while preserving the decidability of the model-checking problem. Further augmenting the logic with unary propositional quality operators preserves decidability, whereas adding an average-operator makes some problems undecidable. We also discuss the complexity of the problem, as well as various extensions

Weighted Modal Transition Systems

Specification theories as a tool in model-driven development processes of component-based software systems have recently attracted a considerable attention. Current specification theories are however qualitative in nature, and therefore fragile in the sense that the inevitable approximation of systems by models, combined with the fundamental unpredictability of hardware platforms, makes it difficult to transfer conclusions about the behavior, based on models, to the actual system. Hence this approach is arguably unsuited for modern software systems. We propose here the first specification theory which allows to capture quantitative aspects during the refinement and implementation process, thus leveraging the problems of the qualitative setting. Our proposed quantitative specification framework uses weighted modal transition systems as a formal model of specifications. These are labeled transition systems with the additional feature that they can model optional behavior which may or may not be implemented by the system. Satisfaction and refinement is lifted from the well-known qualitative to our quantitative setting, by introducing a notion of distances between weighted modal transition systems. We show that quantitative versions of parallel composition as well as quotient (the dual to parallel composition) inherit the properties from the Boolean setting.Comment: Submitted to Formal Methods in System Desig

Approximation in Description Logics: How Weighted Tree Automata Can Help to Define the Required Concept Comparison Measures in FL₀

Recently introduced approaches for relaxed query answering, approximately defining concepts, and approximately solving unification problems in Description Logics have in common that they are based on the use of concept comparison measures together with a threshold construction. In this paper, we will briefly review these approaches, and then show how weighted automata working on infinite trees can be used to construct computable concept comparison measures for FL₀ that are equivalence invariant w.r.t. general TBoxes. This is a first step towards employing such measures in the mentioned approximation approaches.Accepted to LATA 201

Weighted automata and multi-valued logics over arbitrary bounded lattices

AbstractWe show that L-weighted automata, L-rational series, and L-valued monadic second order logic have the same expressive power, for any bounded lattice L and for finite and infinite words. We also prove that aperiodicity, star-freeness, and L-valued first-order and LTL-definability coincide. This extends classical results of Kleene, Büchi–Elgot–Trakhtenbrot, and others to arbitrary bounded lattices, without any distributivity assumption that is fundamental in the theory of weighted automata over semirings. In fact, we obtain these results for large classes of strong bimonoids which properly contain all bounded lattices

Definable transductions and weighted logics for texts

AbstractA text is a word together with an additional linear order on it. We study quantitative models for texts, i.e. text series which assign to texts elements of a semiring. We introduce an algebraic notion of recognizability following Reutenauer and Bozapalidis as well as weighted automata for texts combining an automaton model of Lodaya and Weil with a model of Ésik and Németh. After that we show that both formalisms describe the text series definable in a certain fragment of weighted logics as introduced by Droste and Gastin. In order to do so, we study certain definable transductions and show that they are compatible with weighted logics

Multi-weighted Automata Models and Quantitative Logics

Recently, multi-priced timed automata have received much attention for real-time systems. These automata extend priced timed automata by featuring several price parameters. This permits to compute objectives like the optimal ratio between rewards and costs. Arising from the model of timed automata, the multi-weighted setting has also attracted much notice for classical nondeterministic automata. The present thesis develops multi-weighted MSO-logics on finite, infinite and timed words which are expressively equivalent to multi-weighted automata, and studies decision problems for them. In addition, a Nivat-like theorem for weighted timed automata is proved; this theorem establishes a connection between quantitative and qualitative behaviors of timed automata. Moreover, a logical characterization of timed pushdown automata is given