Programming and reasoning with partial observability

Abstract

Computer programs are increasingly being deployed in partially-observable environments. A partially observable environment is an environment whose state is not completely visible to the program, but from which the program receives partial observations. Developers typically deal with partial observability by writing a state estimator that, given observations, attempts to deduce the hidden state of the environment. In safety-critical domains, to formally verify safety properties developers may write an environment model. The model captures the relationship between observations and hidden states and is used to prove the software correct.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Nov 13, 2020
Source ID
10.1145/3428268

Entities

People

  • Eric W. Atkinson
  • Michael Carbin

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Office of Naval Research

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Engineering

Readers

  • Adaptive Control and Estimation with Uncertainty in Dynamic Systems.
  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development
  • Educational Psychology