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@PHDTHESIS{Neider:444982,
      author       = {Neider, Daniel},
      othercontributors = {Thomas, Wolfgang and Löding, Christof and Leucker, Martin},
      title        = {{A}pplications of automata learning in verification and
                      synthesis},
      address      = {Aachen},
      publisher    = {Publikationsserver der RWTH Aachen University},
      reportid     = {RWTH-CONV-145293},
      pages        = {XV, 267 S. : graph. Darst.},
      year         = {2014},
      note         = {Aachen, Techn. Hochsch., Diss., 2014},
      abstract     = {The objective of this thesis is to explore automata
                      learning, which is an umbrella term for techniques that
                      derive finite automata from external information sources, in
                      the areas of verification and synthesis. We consider four
                      application scenarios that turn out to be particularly
                      well-suited: Regular Model Checking, quantified invariants
                      of linear data structures, automatic reachability games, and
                      labeled safety games. The former two scenarios stem from the
                      area of verification whereas the latter two stem from the
                      area of synthesis (more precisely, from the area of
                      infinite-duration two-player games over graphs, as
                      popularized by McNaughton). Regular Model Checking is a
                      special kind of Model Checking in which the program to
                      verify is modeled in terms of finite automata. We develop
                      various (semi-)algorithms for computing invariants in
                      Regular Model Checking: a white-box algorithm, which takes
                      the whole program as input; two semi-black-box algorithms,
                      which have access to a part of the program and learn missing
                      information from a teacher; finally, two black-box
                      algorithms, which obtain all information about the program
                      from a teacher. For the black-box algorithms, we employ a
                      novel paradigm, called ICE-learning, which is a generic
                      learning setting for learning invariants. Quantified
                      invariants of linear data structures occur in
                      Floyd-Hoare-style verification of programs manipulating
                      arrays and lists. To learn such invariants, we introduce the
                      notion of quantified data automata and develop an active
                      learning algorithm for these automata. Based on a finite
                      sample of configurations that manifest on executions of the
                      program in question, we learn a quantified data automaton
                      and translate it into a logic formula expressing the
                      invariant. The latter potentially requires an additional
                      abstraction step to ensure that the resulting formula falls
                      into a decidable logic. Automatic reachability games are
                      classical reachability games played over automatic graphs;
                      automatic graphs are defined by means of asynchronous
                      transducers and subsume various types of graphs, such as
                      finite graphs, pushdown graphs, and configuration graphs of
                      Turing machines. We first consider automatic reachability
                      games over finite graphs and present a symbolic fixed-point
                      algorithm for computing attractors that uses deterministic
                      finite automata to represent sets of vertices. Since such a
                      fixed-point algorithm is not guaranteed to terminate on
                      games over infinite graphs, we subsequently develop a
                      learning-based (semi-)algorithm that learns the attractor
                      (if possible) from a teacher rather than computing it
                      iteratively. Finally, we consider labeled safety games,
                      which are safety games played over finite graphs whose edges
                      are deterministically labeled with actions. The problem we
                      are interested in is to compute a winning strategy that,
                      when implemented as as a circuit or a piece of code, results
                      in a small implementation. To this end, we model strategies
                      as so-called strategy automata and exploit a common property
                      of active learning algorithms, namely that such algorithms
                      produce conjectures of increasing size. The idea is to start
                      learning the set of all winning plays and stop the learning
                      prematurely as soon as the learner conjectures a winning
                      strategy automaton. This procedure guarantees that the
                      resulting strategy automaton is at most as large as the
                      underlying game graph. To improve the performance of our
                      algorithm further, we develop domain-specific optimizations
                      of Angluin's as well as Kearns and Vazirani's active
                      learning algorithms.},
      keywords     = {Theoretische Informatik (SWD) / Synthese (SWD) /
                      Verifikation (SWD) / Maschinelles Lernen (SWD) /
                      Automatentheorie (SWD) / Invariante (SWD)},
      cin          = {120000 / 122110},
      ddc          = {004},
      cid          = {$I:(DE-82)120000_20140620$ / $I:(DE-82)122110_20140620$},
      shelfmark    = {68Q45 * 68Q32 * 05C57 * 68Q60},
      typ          = {PUB:(DE-HGF)11},
      urn          = {urn:nbn:de:hbz:82-opus-51699},
      url          = {https://publications.rwth-aachen.de/record/444982},
}