On probabilistic analog automata

Abstract

We consider probabilistic automata on a general state space and study their computational power. The model is based on the concept of language recognition by probabilistic automata due to Rabin (Inform. Control 3 (1963) 230) and models of analog computation in a noisy environment suggested by Maass and Orponen (Neural Comput. 10 (1998) 1071), and Maass and Sontag (Neural Comput. 11 (1999) 771). Our main result is a generalization of Rabin's reduction theorem that implies that under very mild conditions, the computational power of such automata is limited to regular languages.