Controlling a random populationArticleAuthors: Thomas Colcombet

; Nathanaël Fijalkow ; Pierre Ohlmann
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Thomas Colcombet;Nathanaël Fijalkow;Pierre Ohlmann
Bertrand et al. introduced a model of parameterised systems, where each agent is represented by a finite state system, and studied the following control problem: for any number of agents, does there exist a controller able to bring all agents to a target state? They showed that the problem is decidable and EXPTIME-complete in the adversarial setting, and posed as an open problem the stochastic setting, where the agent is represented by a Markov decision process. In this paper, we show that the stochastic control problem is decidable. Our solution makes significant uses of well quasi orders, of the max-flow min-cut theorem, and of the theory of regular cost functions. We introduce an intermediate problem of independence interest called the sequential flow problem and study its complexity.
Volume: Volume 17, Issue 4
Published on: November 24, 2021
Accepted on: September 28, 2021
Submitted on: January 1, 2021
Keywords: Computer Science - Formal Languages and Automata Theory, Computer Science - Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing, Computer Science - Computer Science and Game Theory, Computer Science - Logic in Computer Science
Funding:
Source : OpenAIRE Graph- Challenges for Logic, Transducers and Automata; Funder: French National Research Agency (ANR); Code: ANR-16-CE40-0007
- Duality in Formal Languages and Logic - a unifying approach to complexity and semantics; Funder: European Commission; Code: 670624