Multi-Agent Automata and Its Application to LDLK Satisfiability Checking

Abstract

The relation between automata and temporal logics has been widely studied, and as a consequence, automata theoretical approaches have been successfully applied to the checking of satisfiability of temporal logic formulas and the verification of temporal properties in various settings. Epistemic logics are natural formalisms for reasoning of knowledge in multi-agent systems (MAS) and are often combined with temporal logics for the reasoning of a combination of knowledge and temporal behaviors of MAS. However, the relation between automata and the logics combined with epistemic logic has not been sufficiently explored. In this paper, we explore the relation between them by developing a mechanism for handling epistemic operators. In particular, we present a definition of multi-agent automata, the construction of such automata from formulas of the linear dynamic epistemic logic (LDLK), which is an extension of epistemic logic and has high expressivity, and an approach for solving the satisfiability problem of LDLK. Experimental results on the translation of LDLK formulas to multi-agent automata are reported.