Related papers: Lock-step simulation is child's play

To enable automated software testing, the ability to automatically navigate to a state of interest and to explore all, or at least sufficient number of, instances of such a state is fundamental. When testing a computer game the problem has…

Modern computational neuroscience strives to develop complex network models to explain dynamics and function of brains in health and disease. This process goes hand in hand with advancements in the theory of neuronal networks and increasing…

Model-free reinforcement learning (RL) requires a large number of trials to learn a good policy, especially in environments with sparse rewards. We explore a method to improve the sample efficiency when we have access to demonstrations. Our…

In repeated interactions between individuals, we do not expect that exactly the same situation will occur from one time to another. Contrary to what is common in models of repeated games in the literature, most real situations may differ a…

Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms, due to their reliance on external systems to learn from, require digital environments (e.g., simulators) with very simple interfaces, which in turn constrain significantly the implementation of such…

Formal analyses of incentives for compliance with network protocols often appeal to game-theoretic models and concepts. Applications of game-theoretic analysis to network security have generally been limited to highly stylized models, where…

Learning to program could possibly be analogous to acquiring expertise in abstract mathematics, which may be boring or dull for a majority of students. Thus, among the countless options to approach learning coding [1-14], acquiring concepts…

We introduce a formal notion of masking fault-tolerance between probabilistic transition systems based on a variant of probabilistic bisimulation (named masking simulation). We also provide the corresponding probabilistic game…

Simulation has become the evaluation method of choice for many areas of distributing computing research. However, most existing simulation packages have several limitations on the size and complexity of the system being modeled. Fine…

Safe and economic operation of networked systems is often challenging. Optimization-based schemes are frequently considered, since they achieve near-optimality while ensuring safety via the explicit consideration of constraints. In…

There are many benefits in providing formal specifications for our software. However, teaching students to do this is not always easy as courses on formal methods are often experienced as dry by students. This paper presents a game called…

Many popular puzzle and matching games have been analyzed through the lens of computational complexity. Prominent examples include Sudoku, Candy Crush, and Flood-It. A common theme among these widely played games is that their generalized…

Lockstep processing is a recognized technique for helping to secure functional-safety relevant processing against, for instance, single upset errors that might cause faulty execution of code. Lockstepping processors does however bind…

In this paper, we study a class of bilevel programming problem where the inner objective function is strongly convex. More specifically, under some mile assumptions on the partial derivatives of both inner and outer objective functions, we…

In multi-agent environments in which coordination is desirable, the history of play often causes lock-in at sub-optimal outcomes. Notoriously, technologies with a significant environmental footprint or high social cost persist despite the…

There is a broad consensus that the inability to form long-term plans is one of the key limitations of current foundational models and agents. However, the existing planning benchmarks remain woefully inadequate to truly measure their…

Strategic interactions often take place in an environment rife with uncertainty. As a result, the equilibrium of a game is intimately related to the information available to its players. The \emph{signaling problem} abstracts the task faced…

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has demonstrated impressive results in domains such as games and robotics, where task formulations are well-defined. However, few DRL benchmarks are grounded in complex, real-world environments, where…

Simulation is used extensively in autonomous systems, particularly in robotic manipulation. By far, the most common approach is to train a controller in simulation, and then use it as an initial starting point for the real system. We…

We introduce a formal notion of masking fault-tolerance between probabilistic transition systems using stochastic games. These games are inspired in bisimulation games, but they also take into account the possible faulty behavior of…