arXiv subjects

Véronique Bruyère

Publications and source records attributed to Véronique Bruyère.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Games with $ω$-Automatic Preference Relations

This paper investigates Nash equilibria (NEs) in multi-player turn-based games on graphs, where player preferences are modeled as $ω$-automatic relations via deterministic parity automata. Unlike much of the existing literature, which focuses on specific reward functions, our results apply to any preference relation definable by an $ω$-automatic relation. We analyze the computational complexity of determining the existence of an NE (possibly under some constraints), verifying whether a given strategy profile forms an NE, and checking whether a specific outcome can be realized by an NE. When a (constrained) NE exists, we show that there always exists one with finite-memory strategies. Finally, we explore fundamental properties of $ω$-automatic relations and their implications for the existence of equilibria.

cs.LO↗

arXiv2026

Subgame Perfection in Graph Games with $ω$-Recognizable Preference Relations

This paper investigates the constrained existence problem for subgame perfect equilibria (SPEs) in multiplayer graph games. In the proposed framework, each player has a preference relation over the set of plays, assumed to be $ω$-recognizable. Equivalently, he has a preference relation over a finite set of payoffs, and the set of plays with the same payoff is $ω$-regular, for each payoff. This generic framework avoids the need to focus on specific payoff functions. We show that the constrained SPE existence problem is EXPTIME-complete, as well as for Nash equilibria (NEs).

cs.GT↗

arXiv2026

An Automata-Based Approach to Games with $ω$-Automatic Preferences

This paper studies multiplayer turn-based games on graphs in which player preferences are modeled as $ω$-automatic relations given by deterministic parity automata. This contrasts with most existing work, which focuses on specific reward functions. We conduct a computational analysis of these games, starting with the threshold problem in the antagonistic zero-sum case. As in classical games, we introduce the concept of value, defined here as the set of plays a player can guarantee to improve upon, relative to their preference relation. We show that this set is recognized by an alternating parity automaton APW of polynomial size. We also establish the computational complexity of several problems related to the concepts of value and optimal strategy, taking advantage of the $ω$-automatic characterization of value. Next, we shift to multiplayer games and Nash equilibria, and revisit the threshold problem in this context. Based on an APW construction again, we close complexity gaps left open in the literature, and additionally show that cooperative rational synthesis is $\mathsf{PSPACE}$-complete, while it becomes undecidable in the non-cooperative case.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2026

Visibly Recursive Automata

As an alternative to visibly pushdown automata, we introduce visibly recursive automata (VRAs), composed of a set of classical automata that can call each other. VRAs are a strict extension of so-called systems of procedural automata, a model proposed by Frohme and Steffen. We study the complexity of standard language-theoretic operations and classical decision problems for VRAs. Since the class of deterministic VRAs forms a strict subclass in terms of expressiveness, we propose a (weaker) notion that does not restrict expressive power and which we call codeterminism. Codeterminism comes with many desirable algorithmic properties that we demonstrate by using it, e.g., as a stepping stone towards implementing complementation of VRAs.

cs.FL↗

arXiv2025

Stackelberg-Pareto Synthesis with Quantitative Reachability Objectives

In this paper, we deepen the study of two-player Stackelberg games played on graphs in which Player $0$ announces a strategy and Player $1$, having several objectives, responds rationally by following plays providing him Pareto-optimal payoffs given the strategy of Player $0$. The Stackelberg-Pareto synthesis problem, asking whether Player $0$ can announce a strategy which satisfies his objective, whatever the rational response of Player $1$, has been recently investigated for $ω$-regular objectives. We solve this problem for weighted graph games and quantitative reachability objectives such that Player $0$ wants to reach his target set with a total cost less than some given upper bound. We show that it is NEXPTIME-complete, as for Boolean reachability objectives.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2025

Active Learning of Mealy Machines with Timers

We present the first algorithm for query learning Mealy machines with timers in a black-box context. Our algorithm is an extension of the L# algorithm of Vaandrager et al. to a timed setting. We rely on symbolic queries which empower us to reason on untimed executions while learning. Similarly to the algorithm for learning timed automata of Waga, these symbolic queries can be realized using finitely many concrete queries. Experiments with a prototype implementation show that our algorithm is able to efficiently learn realistic benchmarks.

cs.FL↗

arXiv2025

The Non-Cooperative Rational Synthesis Problem for Subgame Perfect Equilibria and omega-regular Objectives

This paper studies the rational synthesis problem for multi-player games played on graphs when rational players are following subgame perfect equilibria. In these games, one player, the system, declares his strategy upfront, and the other players, composing the environment, then rationally respond by playing strategies forming a subgame perfect equilibrium. We study the complexity of the rational synthesis problem when the players have ω-regular objectives encoded as parity objectives. Our algorithm is based on an encoding into a three-player game with imperfect information, showing that the problem is in 2ExpTime. When the number of environment players is fixed, the problem is in ExpTime and is NP- and coNP-hard. Moreover, for a fixed number of players and reachability objectives, we get a polynomial algorithm.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2025

As Soon as Possible but Rationally

This paper addresses complexity problems in rational verification and synthesis for multi-player games played on weighted graphs, where the objective of each player is to minimize the cost of reaching a specific set of target vertices. In these games, one player, referred to as the system, declares his strategy upfront. The other players, composing the environment, then rationally make their moves according to their objectives. The rational behavior of these responding players is captured through two models: they opt for strategies that either represent a Nash equilibrium or lead to a play with a Pareto-optimal cost tuple.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2024

Learning Realtime One-Counter Automata

We present a new learning algorithm for realtime one-counter automata. Our algorithm uses membership and equivalence queries as in Angluin's L* algorithm, as well as counter value queries and partial equivalence queries. In a partial equivalence query, we ask the teacher whether the language of a given finite-state automaton coincides with a counter-bounded subset of the target language. We evaluate an implementation of our algorithm on a number of random benchmarks and on a use case regarding efficient JSON-stream validation.

cs.FL↗

arXiv2023

Automata with Timers

In this work, we study properties of deterministic finite-state automata with timers, a subclass of timed automata proposed by Vaandrager et al. as a candidate for an efficiently learnable timed model. We first study the complexity of the configuration reachability problem for such automata and establish that it is PSPACE-complete. Then, as simultaneous timeouts (we call these, races) can occur in timed runs of such automata, we study the problem of determining whether it is possible to modify the delays between the actions in a run, in a way to avoid such races. The absence of races is important for modelling purposes and to streamline learning of automata with timers. We provide an effective characterization of when an automaton is race-avoiding and establish that the related decision problem is in 3EXP and PSPACE-hard.

cs.FL↗

arXiv2022

Pareto-Rational Verification

We study the rational verification problem which consists in verifying the correctness of a system executing in an environment that is assumed to behave rationally. We consider the model of rationality in which the environment only executes behaviors that are Pareto-optimal with regard to its set of objectives, given the behavior of the system (which is committed in advance of any interaction). We examine two ways of specifying this behavior, first by means of a deterministic Moore machine, and then by lifting its determinism. In the latter case the machine may embed several different behaviors for the system, and the universal rational verification problem aims at verifying that all of them are correct when the environment is rational. For parity objectives, we prove that the Pareto-rational verification problem is co-NP-complete and that its universal version is in PSPACE and both NP-hard and co-NP-hard. For Boolean Büchi objectives, the former problem is $Π_2\mathsf{P}$-complete and the latter is PSPACE-complete. We also study the case where the objectives are expressed using LTL formulas and show that the first problem is PSPACE-complete, and that the second is 2EXPTIME-complete. Both problems are also shown to be fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) for parity and Boolean Büchi objectives. Finally, we evaluate two variations of the FPT algorithm proposed to solve the Pareto-rational verification problem on a parametric toy example as well as on randomly generated instances.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2022

Stackelberg-Pareto Synthesis (Extended Version)

We study the framework of two-player Stackelberg games played on graphs in which Player 0 announces a strategy and Player 1 responds rationally with a strategy that is an optimal response. While it is usually assumed that Player 1 has a single objective, we consider here the new setting where he has several. In this context, after responding with his strategy, Player 1 gets a payoff in the form of a vector of Booleans corresponding to his satisfied objectives. Rationality of Player 1 is encoded by the fact that his response must produce a Pareto-optimal payoff given the strategy of Player 0. We study for several kinds of $ω$-regular objectives the Stackelberg-Pareto Synthesis problem which asks whether Player 0 can announce a strategy which satisfies his objective, whatever the rational response of Player 1. We show that this problem is fixed-parameter tractable for games in which objectives are all reachability, safety, Büchi, co-Büchi, Boolean Büchi, parity, Muller, Streett or Rabin objectives. We also show that this problem is NEXPTIME-complete except for the cases of Büchi objectives for which it is NP-complete and co-Büchi objectives for which it is in NEXPTIME and NP-hard. The problem is already NP-complete in the simple case of reachability objectives and graphs that are trees.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2021

Stackelberg-Pareto Synthesis (Full Version)

In this paper, we study the framework of two-player Stackelberg games played on graphs in which Player 0 announces a strategy and Player 1 responds rationally with a strategy that is an optimal response. While it is usually assumed that Player 1 has a single objective, we consider here the new setting where he has several. In this context, after responding with his strategy, Player 1 gets a payoff in the form of a vector of Booleans corresponding to his satisfied objectives. Rationality of Player 1 is encoded by the fact that his response must produce a Pareto-optimal payoff given the strategy of Player 0. We study the Stackelberg-Pareto Synthesis problem which asks whether Player 0 can announce a strategy which satisfies his objective, whatever the rational response of Player 1. For games in which objectives are either all parity or all reachability objectives, we show that this problem is fixed-parameter tractable and NEXPTIME-complete. This problem is already NP-complete in the simple case of reachability objectives and graphs that are trees.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2020

The Complexity of Subgame Perfect Equilibria in Quantitative Reachability Games

We study multiplayer quantitative reachability games played on a finite directed graph, where the objective of each player is to reach his target set of vertices as quickly as possible. Instead of the well-known notion of Nash equilibrium (NE), we focus on the notion of subgame perfect equilibrium (SPE), a refinement of NE well-suited in the framework of games played on graphs. It is known that there always exists an SPE in quantitative reachability games and that the constrained existence problem is decidable. We here prove that this problem is PSPACE-complete. To obtain this result, we propose a new algorithm that iteratively builds a set of constraints characterizing the set of SPE outcomes in quantitative reachability games. This set of constraints is obtained by iterating an operator that reinforces the constraints up to obtaining a fixpoint. With this fixpoint, the set of SPE outcomes can be represented by a finite graph of size at most exponential. A careful inspection of the computation allows us to establish PSPACE membership.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2019

Partial Solvers for Generalized Parity Games

Parity games have been broadly studied in recent years for their applications to controller synthesis and verification. In practice, partial solvers for parity games that execute in polynomial time, while incomplete, can solve most games in publicly available benchmark suites. In this paper, we combine those partial solvers with the classical recursive algorithm for parity games due to Zielonka. We also extend partial solvers to generalized parity games that are games with conjunction of parity objectives. We have implemented those algorithms and evaluated them on a large set of benchmarks proposed in the last LTL synthesis competition.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2019

On Relevant Equilibria in Reachability Games

We study multiplayer reachability games played on a finite directed graph equipped with target sets, one for each player. In those reachability games, it is known that there always exists a Nash equilibrium (NE) and a subgame perfect equilibrium (SPE). But sometimes several equilibria may coexist such that in one equilibrium no player reaches his target set whereas in another one several players reach it. It is thus very natural to identify "relevant" equilibria. In this paper, we consider different notions of relevant equilibria including Pareto optimal equilibria and equilibria with high social welfare. We provide complexity results for various related decision problems.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2019

Energy mean-payoff games

In this paper, we study one-player and two-player energy mean-payoff games. Energy mean-payoff games are games of infinite duration played on a finite graph with edges labeled by 2-dimensional weight vectors. The objective of the first player (the protagonist) is to satisfy an energy objective on the first dimension and a mean-payoff objective on the second dimension. We show that optimal strategies for the first player may require infinite memory while optimal strategies for the second player (the antagonist) do not require memory. In the one-player case (where only the first player has choices), the problem of deciding who is the winner can be solved in polynomial time while for the two-player case we show co-NP membership and we give effective constructions for the infinite-memory optimal strategies of the protagonist.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2018

Constrained Existence Problem for Weak Subgame Perfect Equilibria with $ω$-Regular Boolean Objectives

We study multiplayer turn-based games played on a finite directed graph such that each player aims at satisfying an omega-regular Boolean objective. Instead of the well-known notions of Nash equilibrium (NE) and subgame perfect equilibrium (SPE), we focus on the recent notion of weak subgame perfect equilibrium (weak SPE), a refinement of SPE. In this setting, players who deviate can only use the subclass of strategies that differ from the original one on a finite number of histories. We are interested in the constrained existence problem for weak SPEs. We provide a complete characterization of the computational complexity of this problem: it is P-complete for Explicit Muller objectives, NP-complete for Co-Büchi, Parity, Muller, Rabin, and Streett objectives, and PSPACE-complete for Reachability and Safety objectives (we only prove NP-membership for Büchi objectives). We also show that the constrained existence problem is fixed parameter tractable and is polynomial when the number of players is fixed. All these results are based on a fine analysis of a fixpoint algorithm that computes the set of possible payoff profiles underlying weak SPEs.

cs.GT↗