We prove an n-EXPTIME lower bound for the problem of deciding the winner in a reachability game on Higher Order Pushdown Automata (HPDA) of level n. This bound matches the known upper bound for parity games on HPDA. As a consequence the mu-calculus model checking over graphs given by n-HPDA is n-EXPTIME complete.
The solution of parity games over pushdown graphs (Walukiewicz '96) was the first step towards an effective theory of infinite-state games. It was shown that winning strategies for pushdown games can be implemented again as pushdown automata. We continue this study and investigate the connection between game presentations and winning strategies in altogether six cases of game arenas, among them realtime pushdown systems, visibly pushdown systems, and counter systems. In four cases we show by a uniform proof method that we obtain strategies implementable by the same type of pushdown machine as …
We continue the investigation of finite-duration variants of infinite-duration games by extending known results for games played on finite graphs to those played on infinite ones. In particular, we establish an equivalence between pushdown parity games and a finite-duration variant. This allows us to determine the winner of a pushdown parity game by solving a reachability game on a finite tree.
Infinite-duration games with disturbances extend the classical framework of infinite-duration games, which captures the reactive synthesis problem, with a discrete measure of resilience against non-antagonistic external influence. This concerns events where the observed system behavior differs from the intended one prescribed by the controller. For games played on finite arenas it is known that computing optimally resilient strategies only incurs a polynomial overhead over solving classical games. This paper studies safety games with disturbances played on infinite arenas induced by pushdown s…
We study two-player zero-sum games over infinite-state graphs with boundedness conditions. Our first contribution is about the strategy complexity, i.e the memory required for winning strategies: we prove that over general infinite-state graphs, memoryless strategies are sufficient for finitary Büchi games, and finite-memory suffices for finitary parity games. We then study pushdown boundedness games, with two contributions. First we prove a collapse result for pushdown omega B games, implying the decidability of solving these games. Second we consider pushdown games with finitary parity along…
Two-player games on graphs is central in many problems in formal verification and program analysis such as synthesis and verification of open systems. In this work we consider solving recursive game graphs (or pushdown game graphs) that can model the control flow of sequential programs with recursion. While pushdown games have been studied before with qualitative objectives, such as reachability and $ω$-regular objectives, in this work we study for the first time such games with the most well-studied quantitative objective, namely, mean-payoff objectives. In pushdown games two types of strateg…
Energy games are a well-studied class of 2-player turn-based games on a finite graph where transitions are labeled with integer vectors which represent changes in a multidimensional resource (the energy). One player tries to keep the cumulative changes non-negative in every component while the other tries to frustrate this. We consider generalized energy games played on infinite game graphs induced by pushdown automata (modelling recursion) or their subclass of one-counter automata. Our main result is that energy games are decidable in the case where the game graph is induced by a one-counter …
Games on recursive game graphs can be used to reason about the control flow of sequential programs with recursion. In games over recursive game graphs, the most natural notion of strategy is the modular strategy, i.e., a strategy that is local to a module and is oblivious to previous module invocations, and thus does not depend on the context of invocation. In this work, we study for the first time modular strategies with respect to winning conditions that can be expressed by a pushdown automaton. We show that such games are undecidable in general, and become decidable for visibly pushdown aut…
Some decidable winning conditions of arbitrarily high finite Borel complexity for games on finite graphs or on pushdown graphs have been recently presented by O. Serre in [ Games with Winning Conditions of High Borel Complexity, in the Proceedings of the International Conference ICALP 2004, LNCS, Volume 3142, p. 1150-1162 ]. We answer in this paper several questions which were raised by Serre in the above cited paper. We first show that, for every positive integer n, the class C_n(A), which arises in the definition of decidable winning conditions, is included in the class of non-ambiguous cont…
We consider both finite-state game graphs and recursive game graphs (or pushdown game graphs), that can model the control flow of sequential programs with recursion, with multi-dimensional mean-payoff objectives. In pushdown games two types of strategies are relevant: global strategies, that depend on the entire global history; and modular strategies, that have only local memory and thus do not depend on the context of invocation. We present solutions to several fundamental algorithmic questions and our main contributions are as follows: (1) We show that finite-state multi-dimensional mean-pay…
Higher-order pushdown systems (PDSs) generalise pushdown systems through the use of higher-order stacks, that is, a nested "stack of stacks" structure. These systems may be used to model higher-order programs and are closely related to the Caucal hierarchy of infinite graphs and safe higher-order recursion schemes. We consider the backwards-reachability problem over higher-order Alternating PDSs (APDSs), a generalisation of higher-order PDSs. This builds on and extends previous work on pushdown systems and context-free higher-order processes in a non-trivial manner. In particular, we show that…
In this chapter, we deal with some specific domains of applications to game theory. This is one of the major class of models in the new approaches of modelling in the economic domain. For that, we use genetic automata which allow to build adaptive strategies for the players. We explain how the automata-based formalism proposed - matrix representation of automata with multiplicities - allows to define semi-distance between the strategy behaviors. With that tools, we are able to generate an automatic processus to compute emergent systems of entities whose behaviors are represented by these genet…
An average-time game is played on the infinite graph of configurations of a finite timed automaton. The two players, Min and Max, construct an infinite run of the automaton by taking turns to perform a timed transition. Player Min wants to minimise the average time per transition and player Max wants to maximise it. A solution of average-time games is presented using a reduction to average-price game on a finite graph. A direct consequence is an elementary proof of determinacy for average-time games. This complements our results for reachability-time games and partially solves a problem posed …
This volume contains the proceedings of the 12th International Symposium on Games, Automata, Logic and Formal Verification (GandALF 2021). The aim of GandALF 2021 symposium is to bring together researchers from academia and industry which are actively working in the fields of Games, Automata, Logics, and Formal Verification. The idea is to cover an ample spectrum of themes, ranging from theory to applications, and stimulate cross-fertilization.
We consider infinite-state Attacker-Defender games with reachability objectives. The results of the paper are twofold. Firstly we prove a new language-theoretic result for weighted automata on infinite words and show its encoding into the framework of Attacker-Defender games. Secondly we use this novel concept to prove undecidability for checking existence of a winning strategy in several low-dimensional mathematical games including vector reachability games, word games and braid games.
This volume contains the proceedings of the 13th International Symposium on Games, Automata, Logic and Formal Verification (GandALF 2022). The aim of GandALF 2022 symposium is to bring together researchers from academia and industry which are actively working in the fields of Games, Automata, Logics, and Formal Verification. The idea is to cover an ample spectrum of themes, ranging from theory to applications, and stimulate cross-fertilization.
This volume contains the proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium on Games, Automata, Logic and Formal Verification (GandALF 2014). The symposium took place in Verona, Italy, from 10th to 12th of September 2014. The proceedings of the symposium contain the abstracts of three invited talks and 19 papers that were accepted after a careful evaluation for presentation at the conference. The topics of the accepted papers range over a wide spectrum, including algorithmic and behavioral game theory, game semantics, formal languages and automata theory, modal and temporal logics, software veri…
We address the model checking problem for shared memory concurrent programs modeled as multi-pushdown systems. We consider here boolean programs with a finite number of threads and recursive procedures. It is well-known that the model checking problem is undecidable for this class of programs. In this paper, we investigate the decidability and the complexity of this problem under the assumption of bounded context-switching defined by Qadeer and Rehof, and of phase-boundedness proposed by La Torre et al. On the model checking of such systems against temporal logics and in particular branching t…
This volume contains the proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Games, Automata, Logic and Formal Verification (GandALF 2013). The symposium took place in Borca di Cadore, Italy, from 29th to 31st of August 2013. The proceedings of the symposium contain the abstracts of three invited talks and 17 papers that were accepted after a careful evaluation for presentation at the conference. The topics of the accepted papers range over a wide spectrum, including algorithmic and behavioral game theory, game semantics, formal languages and automata theory, modal and temporal logics, softwa…
This volume contains the proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium on Games, Automata, Logic and Formal Verification (GandALF 2016). The symposium took place in Catania, Italy, from the 14th to the 16th of September 2016. The proceedings of the symposium contain abstracts of the 3 invited talks and 21 full papers that were accepted after a careful evaluation for presentation at the conference. The topics of the accepted papers cover algorithmic game theory, automata theory, synthesis, formal verification, and dynamic, modal and temporal logics.
Mean-payoff games on timed automata are played on the infinite weighted graph of configurations of priced timed automata between two players, Player Min and Player Max, by moving a token along the states of the graph to form an infinite run. The goal of Player Min is to minimize the limit average weight of the run, while the goal of the Player Max is the opposite. Brenguier, Cassez, and Raskin recently studied a variation of these games and showed that mean-payoff games are undecidable for timed automata with five or more clocks. We refine this result by proving the undecidability of mean-payo…
We prove that the determinacy of Gale-Stewart games whose winning sets are infinitary rational relations accepted by 2-tape Büchi automata is equivalent to the determinacy of (effective) analytic Gale-Stewart games which is known to be a large cardinal assumption. Then we prove that winning strategies, when they exist, can be very complex, i.e. highly non-effective, in these games. We prove the same results for Gale-Stewart games with winning sets accepted by real-time 1-counter Büchi automata, then extending previous results obtained about these games. Then we consider the strenghs of determi…
In a reachability-time game, players Min and Max choose moves so that the time to reach a final state in a timed automaton is minimised or maximised, respectively. Asarin and Maler showed decidability of reachability-time games on strongly non-Zeno timed automata using a value iteration algorithm. This paper complements their work by providing a strategy improvement algorithm for the problem. It also generalizes their decidability result because the proposed strategy improvement algorithm solves reachability-time games on all timed automata. The exact computational complexity of solving reacha…