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LFCS Seminar


Stochastic Games for Verification

Florian Horn

CWI, Amsterdam

3pm Friday 6th of February, 2009
Room G07a, Informatics Forum


Abstract

Graph games are a classical tool for the synthesis of controllers in reactive systems. In this setting, a game is defined by: an arena, which is a graph modelling the system and its evolution; and a winning condition, which models the specification that the controller must ensure. In each state, the outgoing transition is chosen either by the controller (Eve), an hostile environment (Adam), or a stochastic law (Random). This process is repeated for an infinite number of times, generating an infinite play whose winner depends on the winning condition. Our first object of study is the fundamental case of reachability games. We present a new effective approach to the computation of the values, based on permutations of random states. In terms of complexity, the resulting "permutation algorithm" is orthogonal to the classical, strategy-based algorithms: it is exponential in the number of random states, but not in the number of controlled states. We also present an improvement heuristic for this algorithm, inspired by the "strategy improvement" algorithm. We turn next to the very general class of prefix-independent games. We prove the existence of optimal strategies in these games. We also show that our permutation algorithm can be extended into a "meta-algorithm", turning any qualitative algorithm into a quantitative algorithm.

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