Preface

This volume contains the proceedings of the Third Workshop on Hybrid Autonomous Systems (HAS 2013), held in Rome, Italy, on March 17, 2013. HAS 2013 is a satellite event of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software (ETAPS 2013).

The workshop is focused on autonomous systems, for which there has been an increasing interest both in industry and academia. Such systems must operate with limited human intervention in a changing environment and must be able to compensate for significant system failures without external intervention. The hybrid discrete-continuous representation constitutes an appropriate model of autonomous systems. Hybrid systems have behaviours characterised by the interaction between continuous and discrete dynamics and research in the area is driven by several school of thoughts. One approach is mainly focused on applications to automation systems and the models and methods are centred on the concept of hybrid automaton (deterministic or probabilistic). A distinct school of thought interprets hybrid systems as control systems with regime change. Such systems are highly adaptive and suitable for modelling autonomic behaviours and the most prominent models of this approach are the stochastic hybrid systems and the mixed logical and dynamical systems. Another sound approach to deal with the inherent heterogeneity of autonomous systems is the one of discrete abstractions. In particular, discrete abstractions techniques allow the use of formal methods to solve complex control problems in which software and hardware interact with the physical world, through non-ideal communication networks. There is a clear research opportunity to combine these approaches for developing models, methods, techniques, methodologies, tools and environments for autonomous systems engineering. The workshop brings together researchers interested in all aspects of autonomy and resilience of hybrid systems.

In particular, the workshop focuses on:

• new modelling paradigms for autonomous systems;
• verification and safety certification techniques;
• modelling, analysis and control of hybrid systems;
• abstractions and heterogeneous models for autonomous systems;
• uncertainty and stochastic modelling;
• multi-agent systems;
• algebraic and categorical methods;
• interaction between hybrid modelling and complexity science;
• reports on case studies and practical experiments;
• autonomous systems in natural science (e.g. from biology, ecology, climate) and air traffic management systems.

The Programme Committee of HAS 2013 was composed by:

• Ezio Bartocci TU Wien, Austria
• Maria Domenica di Benedetto University of L'Aquila, IT
• Luca Bortolussi (co-chair) University of Trieste, IT
• Manuela Bujorianu (co-chair) University of Warwick, UK
• Alberto Casagrande University of Trieste, IT
• Thao Dang Verimag, FR
• Louise Dennis University of Liverpool, UK
• Clare Dixon University of Liverpool, UK
• Alexandre Donzé UC Berkeley, US
• Martin Fränzle Carl von Ossietzky Universität, DE
• Ichiro Hasuo University of Tokio, JP
• Agung Julius Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, US
• Toshimitsu Ushio Osaka University, JP
• Giordano Pola (co-chair) University of L'Aquila, IT
• Rom Langerak University of Twente, NL
• David Parker University of Birmingham, UK
• Guido Sanguinetti University of Edinburgh, UK
• Olaf Stursberg University of Kassel, DE

The programme committee selected eight regular papers and two presentation-only papers. All regular papers were reviewed by at least three reviewers. The workshop programme includes three keynote speakers: Radu Grosu (Vienna University of Technology, Austria), Maria Domenica di Benedetto (University of L'Aquila), and Rafael Wisniewski (Aalborg University, Denmark). This volume includes accepted papers together with extended abstracts from presentations of Radu Grosu, Maria Domenica di Benedetto, and Rafael Wisniewski.

We would like to thank all the authors, the invited speakers, the programme committee and the external referees for their valuable contributions.

July 2013

Luca Bortolussi, Manuela Bujorianu and Giordano Pola
Programme Co-chairs