Hybrid Games Research Articles

An innovative bi-level scheduling model with hydrogen-thermal-electricity co-supply and dynamic carbon capture strategies for regional integrated energy systems considering hybrid games

With the progression of hydrogen energy technologies, Regional Integrated Energy Systems (RIES) have become instrumental in fostering energy transitions and enhancements. However, the absence of adequate regulatory frameworks for hydrogen-based RIES, hampers the full exploitation of hydrogen energy's potential. Moreover, RIES systems do not intrinsically possess zero-pollution characteristics. To tackle these issues, this study introduces three major innovations: a bi-level scheduling model incorporating a hydrogen energy co-supply strategy, a dynamic carbon capture approach for RIES, and a multi-objective Kepler optimization algorithm (MOKOA) for solving the model. The MOKOA is tailored to assess the impacts of hydrogen energy and carbon capture on system operations, and the interactions among different energy stakeholders. The findings indicate that with dynamic carbon capture strategies, increasing the hydrogen energy utilization factor from 0.2 to 0.6 results in a 6.73 % and 3.50 % increase in returns for energy producers and energy dispatch centers, respectively. Despite a 1.35 % increase in the comprehensive economic cost of IESs, carbon emissions decline by 2.54 %, and total electricity generation from hydrogen fuel cells escalates from 856.83 kWh to 1869.41 kWh. This improvement in hydrogen utilization and concurrent reduction in carbon emissions markedly enhance the economic viability of RIES operations.

How Boardgame Players Imagine Interacting With Technology

Modern digitally-augmented boardgames have, with few exceptions, relied primarily on mobile devices rather than taking advantage of other components such as microcontrollers, sensors, and actuators. What alternative shapes might such games take? And what types of player experiences might such games support? To begin to map out answers to these questions, we collected information about how 31 hobbyist boardgame players envision interacting with technology in future analogue-digital hybrid games, using a rapid idea generation activity. We employed a qualitative content analysis approach to identify their envisioned game components, player interactions with these components, and game effects triggered by these interactions. From this analysis, we constructed a taxonomy of analogue-digital hybrid board games as envisioned by players. This paper uses the taxonomy to organise a detailed discussion of players' imagined interactions. This work thus contributes a player-centric exploration of the design space of hybrid digital-analogue games, with the aim of inspiring new, alternative approaches to boardgame design. Based on the taxonomy, we have additionally released a free and open-source ideation card deck to support new avenues into the design of future hybrid games.

Hybrid dynamical systems logic and its refinements

Hybrid dynamical systems describe the mixed discrete dynamics and continuous dynamics of cyber-physical systems such as aircraft, cars, trains, and robots. To justify correctness properties of the safety-critical control algorithms for their physical models, differential dynamic logic (▪) provides deductive specification and verification techniques implemented in the theorem prover ▪. The logic ▪ is useful for proving, e.g., that all runs of a hybrid dynamical system α satisfy safety property φ (i.e., ▪), or that there is a run of the hybrid dynamical system α ultimately reaching the desired goal φ (i.e., ▪). Logical combinations of ▪'s operators naturally represent safety, liveness, stability and other properties. Variations of ▪ serve additional purposes. Differential refinement logic (▪) adds an operator α≤β expressing that hybrid system α refines hybrid system β, which is useful, e.g., for relating concrete system implementations α to their abstract verification models β. Just like ▪, ▪ is a logic closed under all operators, which opens up systematic ways of simultaneously relating systems and their properties, of reducing system properties to system relations or, vice versa, reducing system relations to system properties. A second variant of ▪, differential game logic (▪), adds the ability of referring to winning strategies of players in hybrid games, which is useful for establishing correctness properties where the actions of different agents may interfere either because they literally compete with one another or because they may interact accidentally. In the theorem prover ▪, ▪ and its variations have been used for verifying ground robot obstacle avoidance, the Federal Aviation Administration's Next-Generation Airborne Collision Avoidance System ACAS X, and the Federal Railroad Administration's train control model.

Research on Optimization and Scheduling of Multi-Integrated Energy System Based on Step-by-Step Carbon Trading and Hybrid Games

In light of the current integrated energy system (IES) transactions, the interaction between the supply and demand sides is not fully considered. With the overall development of the carbon trading market, there is a need to deeply explore the interests of multiple entities in energy trading under the step-by-step carbon trading mechanism. Therefore, research on the optimization and scheduling of multicomprehensive energy systems based on step-by-step carbon trading and hybrid games is proposed. Firstly, the interests and demands of various integrated energy systems and users in multi-integrated energy system energy trading should be comprehensively considered. Based on the master-slave game and Nash bargaining theory, an optimization model of multiple integrated energy systems is built under the step-by-step carbon trading mechanism and load aggregation, representing the interests of the entire user side. Secondly, the proposed game optimization model has been established to prove it can maximize social benefits. IES and user game optimization models have been established, with multi-IES being leaders with the goal of maximizing their own benefits, guiding the optimization between IES and load by formulating energy prices. Users are followers who aim to maximize comprehensive benefits and respond to IES’s decisions through cooperation. Finally, using the improved gray wolf algorithm to solve the built model, it has been proven through comparison of calculation examples that the proposed method can reduce carbon emissions, effectively coordinate the optimization scheduling of multi-IES, and achieve the fair distribution of multi-IES cooperation benefits. This improves the effectiveness of individual and social benefits.

Tri‐layer low‐carbon distributed optimization of integrated energy systems based on hybrid games under stochastic scenarios

AbstractThe low‐carbon development of integrated energy systems is achieved via the sharing of multiple energy interactions by park‐level IES (PIES).However, coordinating profit distribution conflicts among complex interactive stakeholders in stochastic scenarios is challenging. Accordingly, this study proposes a novel tri‐layer framework that aggregates different game mechanisms to investigate the interactions between PIESs and coupled energy markets. First, a linkage trading mechanism is proposed by integrating carbon emissions trading and green certificate trading, which establishes a coupled electricity‐carbon‐green certificate market. Consequently, a park aggregation operator acts as an intermediary between PIESs and the coupled market, setting upper‐level purchase and sale prices to guide unit generation in each PIES using the Stackelberg game theory. Subsequently, the Nash game theory is applied to realize cooperative bargaining among PIESs for a fair revenue distribution. Further, the impact of uncertain environments is considered by utilizing stochastic scenario methods and the conditional value‐at‐risk theory. To protect the privacy of each participating agent while improving the convergence speed, a differential evolutionary method is combined with analysis target cascading to solve the framework. Finally, the proposed scheduling method is validated by utilizing a typical case to optimize conflicting PIES interests in multiple scenarios and realize decarbonisation.

Barriers and Hindrances to the Effective Use of Games in Education: Systematic Literature Review and Intervention Strategies

Games play a central role in human culture, as well as in interaction, interpersonal relationships, and overall development. Based on these premises, game-based learning (GBL) has been increasingly studied as a form of pedagogical innovation in formal and non-formal education. However, the implementation of these types of interventions in real educational settings has faced several barriers and constraints that reduce their possible impact. In this context, the present study aims to fulfil two aims: (a) mapping the main obstacles experienced in the implementation of GBL approaches in educational contexts; and (b) proposing an intervention diagram that matches each type of barrier with potential strategies to address it. Towards these aims, a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was conducted, following the PRISMA methodology and guidelines. This included screening and eligibility processes based on inclusion criteria, which were defined considering the research's aims. Non-peer-reviewed research and studies aimed at other pedagogical approaches, such as gamification, were excluded to obtain a final sample of 11 studies and 1952 individuals, with an average of 195.20 participants per study (SD = 266.14). Through the analysis of the studies, a model of four types of barriers emerged: (1) attitudinal and behavioural barriers; (2) school policy barriers; (3) technological and material barriers; and (4) game literacy barriers. Through the critical evaluation of the barriers emerging from the analyzed empirical studies, we propose some potential methodological strategies that might support practitioners in overcoming them. This includes: (a) the implementation of a co-creation and participatory-driven methodology; (b) the appropriate selection of analogue, digital, or hybrid games; (c) the inclusion of the different educational stakeholders in the process; and (d) the promotion of GBL training within the projects.

Hybrid Games and Interaction Design

Hybrid Games and Interaction Design

Cyber–Physical Verification of Intermittently Powered Embedded Systems

Intermittently powered embedded systems are a foundational and growing component of the Internet of Things. It is essential to rigorously prove these systems’ correctness because they arise both in safety-critical applications and applications where quality-of-service is essential to social good. Such proofs are challenging because they are simultaneously cyber–physical and time-sensitive: correctness is affected by physical properties that change with time. This article introduces a new general-purpose formal verification approach for cyber–physical properties of intermittent systems. We define a high-level modeling and specification language for intermittent systems, define its formal semantics, and prove that the language reduces to hybrid games, enabling the application of existing theorem-proving software. Cold storage for COVID vaccines serves as a running example; we provide a machine-checked proof that safe temperatures are maintained under suitable assumptions. The crux of our proof approach is to identify power and timing assumptions under which sufficient power is available to complete time-sensitive tasks. Orthogonal to approaches that prove new guarantees on power or timing, our work rigorously shows which power and timing assumptions are needed for cyber–physical correctness.

Formally Verified Next-generation Airborne Collision Avoidance Games in ACAS X

The design of aircraft collision avoidance algorithms is a subtle but important challenge that merits the need for provable safety guarantees. Obtaining such guarantees is nontrivial given the unpredictability of the interplay of the intruder aircraft decisions, the ownship pilot reactions, and the subtlety of the continuous motion dynamics of aircraft. Existing collision avoidance systems, such as TCAS and the Next-Generation Airborne Collision Avoidance System ACAS X, have been analyzed assuming severe restrictions on the intruder’s flight maneuvers, limiting their safety guarantees in real-world scenarios where the intruder may change its course. This work takes a conceptually significant and practically relevant departure from existing ACAS X models by generalizing them to hybrid games with first-class representations of the ownship and intruder decisions coming from two independent players, enabling significantly advanced predictive power. By proving the existence of winning strategies for the resulting Adversarial ACAS X in differential game logic, collision-freedom is established for the rich encounters of ownship and intruder aircraft with independent decisions along differential equations for flight paths with evolving vertical/horizontal velocities. We present three classes of models of increasing complexity: single-advisory infinite-time models, bounded time models, and infinite time, multi-advisory models. Within each class of models, we identify symbolic conditions and prove that there then always is a possible ownship maneuver that will prevent a collision between the two aircraft.

GAM on! Six ways to explore social complexity by combining games and agent-based models

ABSTRACT GAM, combining games and agent-based models, shows potential for investigating complex social phenomena. Games offer engaging environments generating insights into social dynamics, perceptions, and behaviours, while agent-based models support the analysis of complexity. Games and agent-based models share the important ability both to input and output qualitative and quantitative data. Currently, there is no overview of GAM approaches. In a systematic literature review, we identified six research design types in empirical studies to date. The functional range of these design types is wide, with diverse application domains involving analogue, digital, and hybrid games. This makes GAM a highly versatile approach, appealing to researchers in both natural and social sciences, along with the gaming community itself. To consolidate the GAM field, we propose recording the design and implementation of studies that combine games and agent-based models by using a dedicated documentation scheme.

Structured Proofs for Adversarial Cyber-Physical Systems

Many cyber-physical systems (CPS) are safety-critical, so it is important to formally verify them, e.g. in formal logics that show a model’s correctness specification always holds. Constructive Differential Game Logic ( CdGL ) is such a logic for (constructive) hybrid games, including hybrid systems. To overcome undecidability, the user first writes a proof, for which we present a proof-checking tool. We introduce Kaisar , the first language and tool for CdGL proofs, which until now could only be written by hand with a low-level proof calculus. Kaisar’s structured proofs simplify challenging CPS proof tasks, especially by using programming language principles and high-level stateful reasoning. Kaisar exploits CdGL ’s constructivity and refinement relations to build proofs around models of game strategies. The evaluation reproduces and extends existing case studies on 1D and 2D driving. Proof metrics are compared and reported experiences are discussed for the original studies and their reproductions.

Hybrid games in strategy analysis: Bargaining in the shadow of competition

In the analysis of value capture, it is central to understand what value each group of players can capture when leaving the negotiation table. Frequently, this will entail engaging in competition, i.e., non-negotiated, strategic interactions with the other players. For instance, if merger talks fail, parties may instead compete on the market. I propose to analyze such situations using a combination of cooperative and noncooperative games, which I refer to as hybrid games. Applications demonstrate how the nature and intensity of the non-negotiated interactions determine value capture, and that a correct delineation of negotiation groups is essential for a realistic analysis. I also show that biform hybrid games feature a type of value-based business strategy in which the stage-one actions literally change the game.

Revocable hierarchical identity-based encryption with adaptive security

Hierarchical identity-based encryption (HIBE) can be extended to revocable HIBE (RHIBE) if a private key of a user can be revoked when the private key is revealed or expired. Previously, many selectively secure RHIBE schemes were proposed, but it is still unsolved problem to construct an adaptively secure RHIBE scheme. In this work, we propose two RHIBE schemes in composite-order bilinear groups and prove their adaptive security under simple static assumptions. To prove the adaptive security, we use the dual system encryption framework, but it is not simple to use the dual system encryption framework in RHIBE since the security model of RHIBE is quite different with that of HIBE. We show that it is possible to solve the problem of the RHIBE security proof by carefully designing hybrid games.

Making data playable: A game co-creation method to promote creative data literacy

This article explores how making data playable, i.e. developing exploratory co-creation techniques that use elements of play and games to interpret small to mid-sized datasets beyond the current focus on visual evidence, can help a) promote creative data literacy in higher education, and b) expand existing definitions of data literacy. The article briefly investigates playful characteristics in existing data practices, and discusses how this perspective compares to existing frameworks that define data literacy. In a second step, we present a Discursive Game Design technique to promote creative data literacy. The article reports on findings from a sample workshop, during which students explored how modifying small, hybrid games based on real-world datasets can alter players’ interpretation of the data, but also their perception of how the games operate as epistemic objects within data analysis. Finally, we formulate recommendations on how to adapt the technique to different educational settings.

Design and Evaluation of a Mobile Application for an Educational Card Game

Educational games can provide players with rich learning and socializing experiences through different interac-tion paradigms, such as board games, card games, and, more recently, hybrid (physical-digital) games. However, the process of making, maintaining, and evolving an educational analog game is not a trivial task. Balancing the game mechanics and dynamics to provide a pleasant and educational gaming experience can be very difficult to achieve. Furthermore, adding a digital component in the gameplay can disturb the experience of the game and learning ob-jectives, and this kind of insertion should be evaluated. This work then aims to report the process of developing and evaluating a mobile application for helping the gameplay of a card game that focuses on on teaching software testing concepts. Our primary concern during the development of the application was whether its insertion would compromise the learning process or the social experience of the card game. The developed application has the fol-lowing functionalities: point counter, dice scrolling, timer, and a summary of the rules. We designed and developed a first version of the application. Then, we evaluated the impact of its insertion on gameplay by applying the game assisted with the application with students from Computer Science and Computer Engineering courses and, after the end of the game, the participants answered questionnaires about the players’ experience and their impressions about the application. Based on the results, we perceived that the use of the application provided benefits to the players’ experience, although the evaluation highlighted some opportunities for improvement. Thus, we evolve the mobile application based on the comments gathered in this evaluation. This new version has improvements on user’s interface, aiming to provide a better user experience, and new functionalities. Furthermore, we assessed the second version and compared both versions of the mobile app in order to collect evidence regarding improvements in the game experience.

On Distributed Nash Equilibrium Computation: Hybrid Games and a Novel Consensus-Tracking Perspective

With the incentive to solve Nash equilibrium computation problems for networked games, this article tries to find answers for the following two problems: 1) how to accommodate hybrid games, which contain both continuous-time players and discrete-time players? and 2) are there any other potential perspectives for solving continuous-time networked games except for the consensus-based gradient-like algorithm established in our previous works? With these two problems in mind, the study of this article leads to the following results: 1) a hybrid gradient search algorithm and a consensus-based hybrid gradient-like algorithm are proposed for hybrid games with their convergence results analytically investigated. In the proposed hybrid strategies, continuous-time players adopt continuous-time algorithms for action updating, while discrete-time players update their actions at each sampling time instant and 2) based on the idea of consensus tracking, the Nash equilibrium learning problem for continuous-time games is reformulated and two new computation strategies are subsequently established. Finally, the proposed strategies are numerically validated.

Hybrid Games in Strategy Analysis: Bargaining in the Shadow of Competition

n the analysis of value capture, it is central to understand what value each group of players can capture when leaving the negotiation table. Frequently, this will entail engaging in competition, i.e., non-negotiated, strategic interactions with the other players. For instance, if merger talks fail, parties may instead compete on the market. I propose to analyze such situations using a combination of cooperative and noncooperative games, which I refer to as hybrid games. Applications demonstrate how the nature and intensity of the non-negotiated interactions determine value capture, and that a correct delineation of negotiation groups is essential for a realistic analysis. I also show that biform hybrid games feature a type of value-based business strategy in which the stage-one actions literally change the game.

Unbounded and revocable hierarchical identity-based encryption with adaptive security, decryption key exposure resistant, and short public parameters.

Revocation functionality and hierarchy key delegation are two necessary and crucial requirements to identity-based cryptosystems. Revocable hierarchical identity-based encryption (RHIBE) has attracted a lot of attention in recent years, many RHIBE schemes have been proposed but shown to be either insecure or bounded where they have to fix the maximum hierarchical depth of RHIBE at setup. In this paper, we propose a new unbounded RHIBE scheme with decryption key exposure resilience and with short public system parameters, and prove our RHIBE scheme to be adaptively secure. Our system model is scalable inherently to accommodate more levels of user adaptively with no adding workload or restarting the system. By carefully designing the hybrid games, we overcome the subtle obstacle in applying the dual system encryption methodology for the unbounded and revocable HIBE. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first construction of adaptively secure unbounded RHIBE scheme.

Viscosity Solution in Multi Time Hybrid Games

Viscosity Solution in Multi Time Hybrid Games

Differential Hybrid Games

This article introduces differential hybrid games , which combine differential games with hybrid games. In both kinds of games, two players interact with continuous dynamics. The difference is that hybrid games also provide all the features of hybrid systems and discrete games, but only deterministic differential equations. Differential games, instead, provide differential equations with continuous-time game input by both players, but not the luxury of hybrid games, such as mode switches and discrete-time or alternating adversarial interaction. This article augments differential game logic with modalities for the combined dynamics of differential hybrid games. It shows how hybrid games subsume differential games and introduces differential game invariants and differential game variants for proving properties of differential games inductively.