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Synthesis from knowledge-based specifications

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CONCUR'98 Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 1998)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1466))

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Abstract

In program synthesis, we transform a specification into a program that is guaranteed to satisfy the specification. In synthesis of reactive systems, the environment in which the program operates may behave nondeterministically, e.g., by generating different sequences of inputs in different runs of the system. To satisfy the specification, the program needs to act so that the specification holds in every computation generated by its interaction with the environment. Often, the program cannot observe all attributes of its environment. In this case, we should transform a specification into a program whose behavior depends only on the observable history of the computation. This is called synthesis with incomplete information. In such a setting, it is desirable to have a knowledge-based specification, which can refer to the uncertainty the program has about the environment's behavior. In this work we solve the problem of synthesis with incomplete information with respect to specifications in the logic of knowledge and time. We show that the problem has the same worst-case complexity as synthesis with complete information.

Work begun while both authors were visitors at the DIMACS Special Year on Logic and Algorithms. Work of the first author supported by an Australian Research Council Large Grant. Work of the second author supported in part by NSF grants CCR-9628400 and CCR-9700061, and by a grant from the Intel Corporation. Thanks to Kai Engelhardt and Yoram Moses for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computing Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney, P.O. Box 123, 2007, Broadway, NSW, Australia

    Ron van der Meyden

  2. Department of Computer Science Mail Stop 132, Rice University, 6100 S. Main Street, 77005-1892, Houston, TX, USA

    Moshe Y. Vardi

Authors
  1. Ron van der Meyden
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  2. Moshe Y. Vardi
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Davide Sangiorgi Robert de Simone

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© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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van der Meyden, R., Vardi, M.Y. (1998). Synthesis from knowledge-based specifications. In: Sangiorgi, D., de Simone, R. (eds) CONCUR'98 Concurrency Theory. CONCUR 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1466. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0055614

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0055614

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-64896-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-68455-8

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