Bisimulation of dynamical systems

Abstract

A general notion of bisimulation is studied for dynamical systems. An algebraic characterization of bisimulation together, with an algorithm for computing the maximal bisimulation relation is derived using geometric control theory. Bisimulation of dynamical systems is shown to be a concept which unifies the system-theoretic concepts of state space equivalence and state space reduction, and which allows to study equivalence of systems with non-minimal state space dimension. The notion of bisimulation is especially powerful for 'non-deterministic' dynamical systems, and leads in this case to a notion of equivalence which is finer than equality of external behavior. Furthermore, by merging bisimulation of dynamical systems with bisimulation of concurrent processes a notion of structural bisimulation is developed for hybrid systems with continuous input and output variables. © Springer-Verlag 2004.