Verification and Control of Hybrid Systems: A Symbolic Approach

Hybrid systems describe the interaction of software, described by finite models such as finite-state machines, with the physical world, described by infinite models such as differential equations. This book addresses problems of verification and controller synthesis for hybrid systems. Although these problems are very difficult to solve for general hybrid systems, several authors have identified classes of hybrid systems that admit symbolic or finite models. The novelty of the book lies on the systematic presentation of these classes of hybrid systems along with the relationships between the hybrid systems and the corresponding symbolic models. To show how the existence of symbolic models can be used for verification and controller synthesis, the book also outlines several key results for the verification and controller design of finite systems. Several examples illustrate the different methods and techniques discussed in the book.