Average-energy games (full version) [article]

Patricia Bouyer and Nicolas Markey and Mickael Randour and Kim G. Larsen and Simon Laursen
2016 arXiv   pre-print
Two-player quantitative zero-sum games provide a natural framework to synthesize controllers with performance guarantees for reactive systems within an uncontrollable environment. Classical settings include mean-payoff games, where the objective is to optimize the long-run average gain per action, and energy games, where the system has to avoid running out of energy. We study average-energy games, where the goal is to optimize the long-run average of the accumulated energy. We show that this
more » ... ective arises naturally in several applications, and that it yields interesting connections with previous concepts in the literature. We prove that deciding the winner in such games is in NP ∩ coNP and at least as hard as solving mean-payoff games, and we establish that memoryless strategies suffice to win. We also consider the case where the system has to minimize the average-energy while maintaining the accumulated energy within predefined bounds at all times: this corresponds to operating with a finite-capacity storage for energy. We give results for one-player and two-player games, and establish complexity bounds and memory requirements.
arXiv:1512.08106v3 fatcat:jjdely3guzborij4lp42rkkwra