Logic List Mailing Archive

OVERLAY 2019: AI & Formal Verification, Logic, Automata, & Synthesis

19-22 Nov 2019
Rende, Italy

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DEADLINE EXTENSION AND INVITED SPEAKER ANNOUNCEMENT
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NEW SUBMISSION DEADLINE : 21st of September 2019
INVITED SPEAKER: ALESSANDRO ABATE (University of Oxford, U.K.)

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  CALL FOR PAPERS - OVERLAY 2019
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        First Workshop on
    Artificial Intelligence and
               fOrmal VERification, Logic, Automata, and sYnthesis
            (OVERLAY)

 18th International Conference of
    the Italian Association for
Artificial Intelligence (AIIA 2019)

November 19-22 2019, Rende (Italy)

https://overlay.uniud.it/workshop/2019/ 
<https://overlay.uniud.it/workshop/2019/>

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The increasing adoption of Artificial Intelligence techniques in 
safety-critical systems, employed in real world scenarios, requires the 
design of reliable, robust and verifiable methodologies. AI systems 
employed in such applications need to provide formal guarantees about 
their safety, increasing the need for a synergic collaboration between the 
AI and Formal Methods scientific communities. Despite this increasing 
need, tools and methodologies integrating Formal Methods and Artificial 
Intelligence solutions have received relatively little attention.

Aware of this scenario, the combined efforts of notable Italian 
researchers, that have been collaborating for several years in 
complementary fields such as specification, verification, and synthesis of 
reactive systems, artificial intelligence, controller synthesis, etc., has 
led to the creation of a new research group on Artificial Intelligence and 
fOrmal VERification, Logic, Automata, and sYnthesis (OVERLAY 
-https://overlay.uniud.it/). The group is structured in four areas: Formal 
Methods, Automated Planning, Discrete and Continuous Hybrid Systems, Tools 
and Applications. In general, it aims at investigating novel methods and 
algorithms supporting the design and development of autonomous 
safety-critical systems.

The workshop, part of the AIxIA 2019 conference, is the first official 
initiative supported by OVERLAY, presenting the research group and its 
current results to the Italian AI scientific community. The event aims at 
establishing a stable, long-term scientific forum on relevant topics 
connected to the relationships between Artificial Intelligence and Formal 
Methods, by providing a stimulating environment where researchers can 
discuss about opportunities and challenges at the border of the two areas.

Important goals of the workshop are (i) to encourage the ongoing 
interaction between the FM and AI communities, (ii) to identify innovative 
tools and methodologies, and (iii) to elicit a discussion on open issues 
and new challenges.

**** CONTRIBUTIONS FORMAT ****

We elicit the contribution of extended abstracts (4 pages + references) 
discussing the interaction of Artificial Intelligence and Formal Methods. 
Invited talks will complement the presentations of contributed papers.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
- automated reasoning
- automated planning and scheduling
- controller synthesis
- formal verification
- formal specification languages
- game theory
- hybrid and discrete systems
- logics
- reactive synthesis
- runtime verification and monitoring
- specification and verification of machine learning systems
- timed automata
- tools and applications

Contributed papers can present recent results at the border of the two fields,
new research directions, challenges and perspectives. Presentation of results
recently published in other scientific journals or conferences is welcome.

All papers will be included in the Proceedings of the event, published in the
CEUR Workshop Proceedings AI*IA Series as well as on the workshop website.
CEUR WS proceedings are archival proceedings indexed by DBLP and Scopus.

**** IMPORTANT DATES ****

? Paper submission (extended) : September 21st, 2019
? Notification: October 9th, 2019
? Camera-ready: November 1st, 2019
- Workshop: November 19-22, 2019

**** SUBMISSIONS ****

Submitted papers should not exceed four (4) pages, not including references.
Authors are asked to use the LaTeX style provided at
https://overlay.uniud.it/workshop/2019/ 
<https://overlay.uniud.it/workshop/2019/>.

Submissions must be in PDF format and will be handled via the
EasyChair Conference system at the following address:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=overlay19 
<https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=overlay19>

**** INVITED SPEAKER ****

Speaker: Alessandro Abate (University of Oxford, UK)

Title: Certified Reinforcement Learning with Logic Guidance

Abstract: A model-free Reinforcement Learning (RL) framework is proposed, 
to synthesise policies for an unknown, and possibly continuous-state, 
Markov Decision Process (MDP), such that a given linear temporal property 
is satisfied. We convert the given property into an automaton, namely a 
finite-state machine expressing the property. Exploiting the structure of 
the automaton, we shape an adaptive reward function on-the-fly, so that 
the RL algorithm can synthesise a policy resulting in traces that 
probabilistically satisfy the linear temporal property. Under the 
assumption that the MDP has finite number of states, theoretical 
guarantees are provided on the convergence of the RL algorithm. Whenever 
the MDP has a continuous state space, we empirically show that our 
framework finds satisfying policies, if existing. Additionally, the 
proposed algorithm can handle time-varying periodic environments. The 
performance of the proposed architecture is evaluated via a set of 
numerical examples and benchmarks, where we observe an improvement of one 
order of magnitude in the number of iterations required for the policy 
synthesis, compared to existing approaches (when available).

Short Bio:Alessandro Abate is Professor of Verification and Control in the 
Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford (UK), and is a 
fellow of the Alan Turing Institute in London (UK). He received a Laurea 
in Electrical Engineering in October 2002 from the University of Padova 
(IT), an MS in May 2004 and a PhD in December 2007, both in Electrical 
Engineering and Computer Sciences, at UC Berkeley (USA). He has been an 
International Fellow in the CS Lab at SRI International in Menlo Park 
(USA), and a PostDoctoral Researcher at Stanford University (USA), in the 
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. From June 2009 to mid 2013 he 
has been an Assistant Professor at the Delft Centre for Systems and 
Control, TU Delft - Delft University of Technology (NL).

**** WORKSHOP CHAIRS ****

- Nicola Gigante ? University of Udine, Italy
- Federico Mari ? University of Rome Foro Italico, Italy
- AndreA Orlandini ? ISTC-CNR, Italy

**** PROGRAM COMMITTEE (expanding...) ****

- Massimo Benerecetti ? University of Naples Federico II
- Davide Bresolin ? University of Padova
- Amedeo Cesta ? ISTC-CNR, Rome
- Alessandro Cimatti ? Fondazione Bruno Kessler
- Riccardo De Benedictis ? ISTC-CNR, Rome
- Dario Della Monica ? University of Udine
- Marco Faella ? University of Naples Federico II
- Luca Geretti ? University of Verona
- Salvatore La Torre ? University of Salerno
- Ivan Lanese ? University of Bologna
- Angelo Montanari ? University of Udine
- Adriano Peron ? University of Naples Federico II
- Carla Piazza ? University of Udine
- Pietro Sala ? University of Verona
- Guido Sciavicco ? University of Ferrara
- Stefano Tonetta ? Fondazione Bruno Kessler
- Enrico Tronci ? University of Rome La Sapienza
- Alessandro Umbrico ? ISTC-CNR, Rome
- Tiziano Villa ? University of Verona

**** CONTACTS ****

Any inquiries can be directed tooverlay@uniud.it <mailto:overlay@uniud.it>
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