Semantics for Hybrid Components - Categorical Tools and Techniques
Session Chair: José Proença
A main challenge of the 21st century is to engineer software devices that tightly interact with physical processes such as velocity, movement, energy, and time. They are currently qualified as ‘hybrid’ to emphasise this cyber-physical interaction, which forces a shift from standard software practices to a more multifaceted view that combines computer science, control theory, and analysis.
In this talk, I will systematically overview a series of category-theoretical constructions that serve as an interpretation domain for hybrid computational units and interactions between them. As an illustration of its power, I will use the framework to tackle two main problems in the hybrid systems field: the lack of a uniform semantics for different variants of hybrid automata (currently, the standard formalism for hybrid systems) and the lack of suitable semantics to interpret cyclic behaviour in hybrid component-based programming.
I will assume only basic knowledge of category theory. The talk is based on joint work with Sergey Goncharov.