Reachability Analysis of Cyber-Physical Systems: Are we there yet?

Zoom link: https://cuboulder.zoom.us/j/190280621

ABSTRACT: Reachability analysis asks if a system starting from some initial set of configurations can reach a designated set of target states. This is a fundamental question for a variety of models ranging from automata  to hybrid dynamical systems.

In this talk, we will provide an historical overview of reachability analysis especially for nonlinear cyber-physical systems that capture important applications ranging from autonomous UAVs to automated insulin infusion for patients with type-1 diabetes. In each of these situations, we show how safety can be modeled as an abstract reachability analysis problem for a  dynamical system model against some initial and target sets of configurations, while the answers to reachability analysis can provide formal guarantees of correctness or expose corner case defects.

Next, we will survey our various solution attempts over the past decade that combine tools from diverse areas including interval analysis, optimization, dynamical systems, probability theory and graph theory. We will demonstrate successful applications ranging from real-time UAV collision prediction to tuning control strategies for patients with type-1 diabetes. We will conclude by examining ongoing and future challenges that center around reachability analysis in real-time for monitoring highly dynamic environments such as autonomous UAVs in urban areas and attempts to model human operators in these settings.

The talk  will be entirely self-contained and require no knowledge of any of the topics mentioned above.

BIO: Sriram Sankaranarayanan is an associate professor of Computer Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His research interests include automatic techniques for reasoning about the behavior of computer and cyber-physical systems. Sriram obtained a PhD in 2005 from Stanford University where he was advised by Zohar Manna and Henny Sipma. Subsequently he worked as a research staff member at NEC research labs in Princeton, NJ. He has been on the faculty at CU Boulder since 2009.