We consider a problem on the synthesis of reactive controllers that optimize
some a priori unknown performance criterion while interacting with an
uncontrolled environment such that the system satisfies a given temporal logic
specification. We decouple the problem into two subproblems. First, we extract
a (maximally) permissive strategy for the system, which encodes multiple
(possibly all) ways in which the system can react to the adversarial
environment and satisfy the specifications. Then, we quantify the a priori
unknown performance criterion as a (still unknown) reward function and compute
an optimal strategy for the system within the operating envelope allowed by the
permissive strategy by using the so-called maximin-Q learning algorithm. We
establish both correctness (with respect to the temporal logic specifications)
and optimality (with respect to the a priori unknown performance criterion) of
this two-step technique for a fragment of temporal logic specifications. For
specifications beyond this fragment, correctness can still be preserved, but
the learned strategy may be sub-optimal. We present an algorithm to the overall
problem, and demonstrate its use and computational requirements on a set of
robot motion planning examples.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, submitted to IROS 201