Properties of Hybrid Systems—A Computer Science Perspective

The paper formalizes and classifies important properties of hybrid, i.e. mixed discrete and continuous, systems from a computer science point of view. General proof methods for some of these properties are also provided and applied to an example. For the central properties stability and attraction the vital role topology plays in their definition is made obvious and parallels to invariance and persistence properties from the computer science domain are drawn. In the context of proof methods conditions are identified uner which Liapunov functions define Galois connections. This relates a control theory method of abstraction to an abstraction technique which is usually applied in computer science. As a whole the paper promotes a deeper understanding of hybrid systems by computer scientists.