Luke Rickard

Formal Controller Synthesis for Markov Jump Linear Systems with Uncertain Dynamics

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Automated synthesis of provably correct controllers for cyber-physical systems is crucial for deploying these systems in safety-critical scenarios. However, their hybrid features and stochastic or unknown behaviours make this synthesis problem challenging. In this paper, we propose a method for synthesizing controllers for Markov jump linear systems (MJLSs), a particular class of cyber-physical systems, that certifiably satisfy a requirement expressed as a specification in probabilistic computation tree logic (PCTL). An MJLS consists of a finite set of linear dynamics with unknown additive disturbances, where jumps between these modes are governed by a Markov decision process (MDP). We consider both the case where the transition function of this MDP is given by probability intervals or where it is completely unknown. Our approach is based on generating a finite-state abstraction which captures both the discrete and the continuous behaviour of the original system. We formalise such abstraction as an interval Markov decision process (iMDP): intervals of transition probabilities are computed using sampling techniques from the so-called "scenario approach", resulting in a probabilistically sound approximation of the MJLS. This iMDP abstracts both the jump dynamics between modes, as well as the continuous dynamics within the modes. To demonstrate the efficacy of our technique, we apply our method to multiple realistic benchmark problems, in particular, temperature control, and aerial vehicle delivery problems.

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