Elementary Action Systems

Abstract

This chapter expounds basic notions. An elementary action system is a triple consisting of the set of states, the transition relation between states, and a family of binary relations defined on the set of states. The elements of this family are called atomic actions. Each pair of states belonging to an atomic action is a possible performance of this action. This purely extensional understanding of atomic actions is close to dynamic logic. Compound actions are defined as sets of finite sequences of atomic actions. Thus compound actions are regarded as languages over the alphabet whose elements are atomic actions. This chapter is concerned with the problem of performability of actions and the algebraic structure of the set of compound actions of the system. The theory of probabilistic action systems is also outlined.