Generalizing action systems to hybrid systems

Abstract

Action systems have been used successfully to describe discrete systems, i.e., systems with discrete control acting upon a discrete state space. In this paper we extend the action system approach to hybrid systems by defining continuous action systems. These are systems with discrete control over a continuously evolving state, whose semantics is defined in terms of traditional action systems. We show that continuous action systems are very general and can be used to describe a diverse range of hybrid systems. Moreover, the properties of continuous action systems are proved using standard action systems proof techniques.