No Arabic abstract
We present a new method for the automated synthesis of digital controllers with formal safety guarantees for systems with nonlinear dynamics, noisy output measurements, and stochastic disturbances. Our method derives digital controllers such that the corresponding closed-loop system, modeled as a sampled-data stochastic control system, satisfies a safety specification with probability above a given threshold. The proposed synthesis method alternates between two steps: generation of a candidate controller pc, and verification of the candidate. pc is found by maximizing a Monte Carlo estimate of the safety probability, and by using a non-validated ODE solver for simulating the system. Such a candidate is therefore sub-optimal but can be generated very rapidly. To rule out unstable candidate controllers, we prove and utilize Lyapunovs indirect method for instability of sampled-data nonlinear systems. In the subsequent verification step, we use a validated solver based on SMT (Satisfiability Modulo Theories) to compute a numerically and statistically valid confidence interval for the safety probability of pc. If the probability so obtained is not above the threshold, we expand the search space for candidates by increasing the controller degree. We evaluate our technique on three case studies: an artificial pancreas model, a powertrain control model, and a quadruple-tank process.
We present a new method for the automated synthesis of safe and robust Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controllers for stochastic hybrid systems. Despite their widespread use in industry, no automated method currently exists for deriving a PID controller (or any other type of controller, for that matter) with safety and performance guarantees for such a general class of systems. In particular, we consider hybrid systems with nonlinear dynamics (Lipschitz-continuous ordinary differential equations) and random parameters, and we synthesize PID controllers such that the resulting closed-loop systems satisfy safety and performance constraints given as probabilistic bounded reachability properties. Our technique leverages SMT solvers over the reals and nonlinear differential equations to provide formal guarantees that the synthesized controllers satisfy such properties. These controllers are also robust by design since they minimize the probability of reaching an unsafe state in the presence of random disturbances. We apply our approach to the problem of insulin regulation for type 1 diabetes, synthesizing controllers with robust responses to large random meal disturbances, thereby enabling them to maintain blood glucose levels within healthy, safe ranges.
Modern nonlinear control theory seeks to endow systems with properties such as stability and safety, and has been deployed successfully across various domains. Despite this success, model uncertainty remains a significant challenge in ensuring that model-based controllers transfer to real world systems. This paper develops a data-driven approach to robust control synthesis in the presence of model uncertainty using Control Certificate Functions (CCFs), resulting in a convex optimization based controller for achieving properties like stability and safety. An important benefit of our framework is nuanced data-dependent guarantees, which in principle can yield sample-efficient data collection approaches that need not fully determine the input-to-state relationship. This work serves as a starting point for addressing important questions at the intersection of nonlinear control theory and non-parametric learning, both theoretical and in application. We validate the proposed method in simulation with an inverted pendulum in multiple experimental configurations.
High performance but unverified controllers, e.g., artificial intelligence-based (a.k.a. AI-based) controllers, are widely employed in cyber-physical systems (CPSs) to accomplish complex control missions. However, guaranteeing the safety and reliability of CPSs with this kind of controllers is currently very challenging, which is of vital importance in many real-life safety-critical applications. To cope with this difficulty, we propose in this work a Safe-visor architecture for sandboxing unverified controllers in CPSs operating in noisy environments (a.k.a. stochastic CPSs). The proposed architecture contains a history-based supervisor, which checks inputs from the unverified controller and makes a compromise between functionality and safety of the system, and a safety advisor that provides fallback when the unverified controller endangers the safety of the system. Both the history-based supervisor and the safety advisor are designed based on an approximate probabilistic relation between the original system and its finite abstraction. By employing this architecture, we provide formal probabilistic guarantees on preserving the safety specifications expressed by accepting languages of deterministic finite automata (DFA). Meanwhile, the unverified controllers can still be employed in the control loop even though they are not reliable. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed results by applying them to two (physical) case studies.
We introduce a novel learning-based approach to synthesize safe and robust controllers for autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems and, at the same time, to generate challenging tests. This procedure combines formal methods for model verification with Generative Adversarial Networks. The method learns two Neural Networks: the first one aims at generating troubling scenarios for the controller, while the second one aims at enforcing the safety constraints. We test the proposed method on a variety of case studies.
We present a sound and automated approach to synthesize safe digital feedback controllers for physical plants represented as linear, time invariant models. Models are given as dynamical equations with inputs, evolving over a continuous state space and accounting for errors due to the digitalization of signals by the controller. Our approach has two stages, leveraging counterexample guided inductive synthesis (CEGIS) and reachability analysis. CEGIS synthesizes a static feedback controller that stabilizes the system under restrictions given by the safety of the reach space. Safety is verified either via BMC or abstract acceleration; if the verification step fails, we refine the controller by generalizing the counterexample. We synthesize stable and safe controllers for intricate physical plant models from the digital control literature.