RBE595: Formal methods in Robotics

note that this is a schedule from 2017 and is subject to a lot of changes in 2019. The schedule will be updated soon.

Lectures schedule.

• Formal specification: LTL and Automata

  • References:

    • John E. Hopcroft, Rajeev Motwani, Jeffrey D. Ullman (2000). “Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation” (2nd Edition). Pearson Education.

    • “Principle of Model Checking.” Chap 3, 4.

    • Manna, Zohar, and Amir Pnueli. “The temporal logic of reactive and concurrent systems: Specification.” Springer Science & Business Media, 2012.

• Temporal logic verification in transition systems: Invariance, Safety, and Liveness

  • Principle of Model Checking. Chap 5.

• Optimal planning in Markov decision processes under temporal logic constraints

  • References:

    • Preliminary: Markov decision processes and optimal planning: Puterman, Martin L. “Markov decision processes: discrete stochastic dynamic programming”. John Wiley & Sons, 2014.

    • “PRISM Model Checker: Tutorial.” http:www.prismmodelchecker.orgtutorial

    • Jie Fu, Ufuk Topcu, “Probably Approximately Correct MDP Learning and Control With Temporal Logic Constraints”, Robotics: Science and Systems X, 2014.

    • L. de Alfaro. “Formal Verification of Probabilistic Systems.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University, 1997.

• Reactive synthesis in dynamic environments

  • References:

    • Thomas, W. (2002). “Automata, logics, and infinite games: a guide to current research (Vol. 2500).” Springer Science & Business Media.

• Abstraction-based control design for continuous systems under temporal logic constraints

  • References:

    • Habets, L. C. G. J. M., and Jan H. Van Schuppen. “A control problem for affine dynamical systems on a full-dimensional polytope.” Automatica 40.1 (2004): 21-35.

    • Kloetzer, Marius, and Calin Belta. “A fully automated framework for control of linear systems from temporal logic specifications.” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control 53.1 (2008): 287-297.

• Safe verification of continuous/hybrid systems using Barrier functions

  • References:

    • Prajna, Stephen, Ali Jadbabaie, and George J. Pappas. “A framework for worst-case and stochastic safety verification using barrier certificates.” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control 52.8 (2007): 1415-1428.

    • (with supplementary reading of sum of squares programming:) Papachristodoulou, Antonis, and Stephen Prajna. “A tutorial on sum of squares techniques for systems analysis.” American Control Conference, 2005. Proceedings of the 2005. IEEE, 2005.

    • A brief introduction to hybrid systems: Lygeros, John, Claire Tomlin, and Shankar Sastry. “Hybrid systems: modeling, analysis and control.” preprint (1999).

• Provably correct reach-avoid control design in continuous systems using Control Lyapunov and Barrier functions

  • References:

    • Romdlony,MuhammadZakiyullah,and Bayu Jayawardhana. “Uniting control Lyapunov and control barrier functions.” Decision and Control (CDC), 2014 IEEE 53rd Annual Conference on. IEEE, 2014.

• Reach-avoid control design using reachability analysis and differential game theory

  • References:

    • Kurzhanski, Alexander B., and Pravin Varaiya. “Dynamic optimization for reachability problems.” Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications 108.2 (2001): 227-251.

    • Hwang,Inseok,DuanStipanovi,and Claire Tomlin. “Polytopic approximations of reachable sets applied to linear dynamic games and a class of nonlinear systems.” Advances in control, communication networks, and transportation systems (2005): 3-19.

• Sampled Topic: Optimization-based trajectory generation for LTL specifications

  • References:

    • Wolff,Eric M.,Ufuk Topcu,and Richard M. Murray. “Optimization-based trajectory generation with linear temporal logic specifications.” ICRA 2014.

    • Mixed Integer Programming for Control: Link

    • Integrated with Model Predictive Control: Raman, Vasumathi, et al. “Model predictive control with signal temporal logic specifications.”CDC, 2014.

• Sampled Topic: A brief introduction to Metric Temporal Logic and Timed Automata

  • References:

    • Ouaknine, Jo“el, and James Worrell. ”Some Recent Results in Metric Temporal Logic." FORMATS. Vol. 5215. 2008.

    • Alur, Rajeev, and David L. Dill. “A theory of timed automata.” Theoretical computer science 126.2 (1994): 183-235.

The topics we have covered in class is far from a comprehensive list. The following list includes more recent work for your independent study:

• Minimum violation planning: Kim, Kangjin, Georgios Fainekos, and Sriram Sankaranarayanan. “On the minimal revision problem of specification automata.” The International Journal of Robotics Research 34.12 (2015): 1515-1535.

• Inverse Reinforcement Learning meets temporal logic constraints: Min Wen, Ivan Papusha, Ufuk Topcu, “Learning from Demonstrations with High-Level Side Information”, Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence Main track. Pages 3055-3061, 2017.

• Joint sensing and reactive synthesis: Jie Fu and Ufuk Topcu, “Synthesis of joint control and active sensing strategies under temporal logic constraints,” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol.PP, no.99, pp.1-1, 2016.

• Generalized reactivity: Piterman, Nir, Amir Pnueli, and Yaniv Sa'ar. “Synthesis of reactive (1) designs.” VMCAI. Vol. 3855. 2006.

• MPC meets reactive synthesis: Wongpiromsarn, Tichakorn, Ufuk Topcu, and Richard M. Murray. “Receding horizon control for temporal logic specifications.” Proceedings of the 13th ACM international conference on Hybrid systems: computation and control. ACM, 2010.

If you have any suggestion on the course, please feel free to email me at jfu2 AT wpi.edu