The True Colors of Memory: A Tour of Chromatic-Memory Strategies in Zero-Sum Games on Graphs (Invited Talk)

Authors Patricia Bouyer , Mickael Randour , Pierre Vandenhove



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Author Details

Patricia Bouyer
  • Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, ENS Paris-Saclay, Laboratoire Méthodes Formelles, 91190, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Mickael Randour
  • F.R.S.-FNRS & UMONS - Université de Mons, Belgium
Pierre Vandenhove
  • F.R.S.-FNRS & UMONS - Université de Mons, Belgium
  • Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, ENS Paris-Saclay, Laboratoire Méthodes Formelles, 91190, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

Acknowledgements

Most of the results presented here [Bouyer et al., 2022; Patricia Bouyer et al., 2021; Bouyer et al., 2022; Patricia Bouyer et al., 2022] are related to the F.R.S.-FNRS project FrontieRS, led by the authors. Some of these were obtained in collaboration with Antonio Casares, Stéphane Le Roux, and Youssouf Oualhadj. We express our utmost gratitude to our delightful co-authors.

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Patricia Bouyer, Mickael Randour, and Pierre Vandenhove. The True Colors of Memory: A Tour of Chromatic-Memory Strategies in Zero-Sum Games on Graphs (Invited Talk). In 42nd IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 250, pp. 3:1-3:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2022.3

Abstract

Two-player turn-based zero-sum games on (finite or infinite) graphs are a central framework in theoretical computer science - notably as a tool for controller synthesis, but also due to their connection with logic and automata theory. A crucial challenge in the field is to understand how complex strategies need to be to play optimally, given a type of game and a winning objective. In this invited contribution, we give a tour of recent advances aiming to characterize games where finite-memory strategies suffice (i.e., using a limited amount of information about the past). We mostly focus on so-called chromatic memory, which is limited to using colors - the basic building blocks of objectives - seen along a play to update itself. Chromatic memory has the advantage of being usable in different game graphs, and the corresponding class of strategies turns out to be of great interest to both the practical and the theoretical sides.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Formal languages and automata theory
Keywords
  • two-player games on graphs
  • finite-memory strategies
  • chromatic memory
  • parity automata
  • ω-regularity

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