Control Improvisation with Probabilistic Temporal Specifications
For researchers in cyber-physical systems and formal methods, this work provides a method to generate human-like control sequences with guaranteed properties, though it is an incremental combination of existing techniques.
The paper addresses generating randomized control sequences for networked systems by combining data-driven learning with controller synthesis from formal specifications. The approach produces realistic sequences that mimic human actuation while satisfying probabilistic temporal specifications, demonstrated on lighting appliance control.
We consider the problem of generating randomized control sequences for complex networked systems typically actuated by human agents. Our approach leverages a concept known as control improvisation, which is based on a combination of data-driven learning and controller synthesis from formal specifications. We learn from existing data a generative model (for instance, an explicit-duration hidden Markov model, or EDHMM) and then supervise this model in order to guarantee that the generated sequences satisfy some desirable specifications given in Probabilistic Computation Tree Logic (PCTL). We present an implementation of our approach and apply it to the problem of mimicking the use of lighting appliances in a residential unit, with potential applications to home security and resource management. We present experimental results showing that our approach produces realistic control sequences, similar to recorded data based on human actuation, while satisfying suitable formal requirements.