Symbolic models for nonlinear control systems affected by disturbances

TL;DR

This paper develops symbolic models for nonlinear control systems with disturbances, enabling effective approximation and formal verification of such systems using abstract symbolic representations.

Contribution

It introduces a method to construct symbolic models for disturbed nonlinear control systems that approximate the original systems via alternating approximate bisimulation.

Findings

Symbolic models can be effectively constructed for disturbed nonlinear systems.

The models approximate the systems in the sense of alternating approximate bisimulation.

Facilitates formal verification and control design for complex systems.

Abstract

In the last few years there has been a growing interest in the use of symbolic models for the formal verification and control design of purely continuous or hybrid systems. Symbolic models are abstract descriptions of continuous systems where one symbol corresponds to an "aggregate" of continuous states. In this paper we face the problem of deriving symbolic models for nonlinear control systems affected by disturbances. The main contribution of this paper is in proposing symbolic models that can be effectively constructed and that approximate nonlinear control systems affected by disturbances in the sense of alternating approximate bisimulation.