Citation
Edward A. Lee. "Constructive Collisions, chapter in From Programs To Systems. The Systems perspective in Computing.". Saddek Bensalem, Yassinie Lakhneck, Axel Legay (eds.), 11, 161-176, 8415, Springer Berling Heidelberg, 2014; This work was supported in part by the iCyPhy Research Center (Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems, supported by IBM and United Technologies), and the Center for Hybrid and Embedded Software Systems (CHESS) at UC Berkeley (supported by the National Science Foundation, NSF awards #0720882 (CSR-EHS: PRET), #1035672 (CPS: Medium: Ptides), and #0931843 (ActionWebs), the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL #N0013-12-1-G015), and the following companies: Bosch, National Instruments, and Toyota). .

Abstract
This paper studies the semantics of models for discrete physical phenomena such as rigid body collisions. The paper combines generalized functions (specifically the Dirac delta function), superdense time, modal models, and constructive semantics to get a rich, flexible, efficient, and rigorous approach to modeling such systems. It shows that many physical scenarios that have been problematic for modeling techniques manifest as nonconstructive models, and that constructive versions of some of the models properly reflect uncertainty in the behavior of the physical systems that plausibly arise from the principles of quantum mechanics. The paper argues that these modeling difficulties are not reasonably solved by more detailed continuous models of the underlying physical phenomena. Such more detailed models simply shift the uncertainty to other aspects of the model. Since such detailed models come with a high computational cost, there is little justification in using them unless the goal of modeling is specifically to understand these more detailed physical processes. An implementation of these methods in the Ptolemy II modeling and simulation environment is described.

Electronic downloads

• http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-642-54848-2

• HTML

  Edward A. Lee. <a
  href="http://chess.eecs.berkeley.edu/pubs/1105.html"
  ><i><b>Constructive Collisions</b>,
  chapter in From Programs To Systems.  The Systems
  perspective in Computing.</i></a>, Saddek
  Bensalem, Yassinie Lakhneck, Axel Legay (eds.), 11, 161-176,
  8415, Springer Berling Heidelberg, 2014; <i>This work
  was supported in part by the iCyPhy Research Center
  (Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems, supported by IBM and
  United Technologies), and the Center for Hybrid and Embedded
  Software Systems (CHESS) at UC Berkeley (supported by the
  National Science Foundation, NSF awards #0720882 (CSR-EHS:
  PRET), #1035672 (CPS: Medium: Ptides), and #0931843
  (ActionWebs), the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL
  #N0013-12-1-G015), and the following companies: Bosch,
  National Instruments, and Toyota).</i>
  .

• Plain text

  Edward A. Lee. "<b>Constructive
  Collisions</b>, chapter in From Programs To Systems. 
  The Systems perspective in Computing.". Saddek
  Bensalem, Yassinie Lakhneck, Axel Legay (eds.), 11, 161-176,
  8415, Springer Berling Heidelberg, 2014; <i>This work
  was supported in part by the iCyPhy Research Center
  (Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems, supported by IBM and
  United Technologies), and the Center for Hybrid and Embedded
  Software Systems (CHESS) at UC Berkeley (supported by the
  National Science Foundation, NSF awards #0720882 (CSR-EHS:
  PRET), #1035672 (CPS: Medium: Ptides), and #0931843
  (ActionWebs), the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL
  #N0013-12-1-G015), and the following companies: Bosch,
  National Instruments, and Toyota).</i>
  .

• BibTeX

  @inbook{Lee14_bConstructiveCollisionsbChapterInFromProgramsTo,
      author = {Edward A. Lee},
      editor = {Saddek Bensalem, Yassinie Lakhneck, Axel Legay},
      title = {<b>Constructive Collisions</b>, chapter in From
                Programs To Systems.  The Systems perspective in
                Computing.},
      chapter = {11},
      pages = {161-176},
      volume = {8415},
      publisher = {Springer Berling Heidelberg},
      year = {2014},
      note = {<i>This work was supported in part by the iCyPhy
                Research Center (Industrial Cyber-Physical
                Systems, supported by IBM and United
                Technologies), and the Center for Hybrid and
                Embedded Software Systems (CHESS) at UC Berkeley
                (supported by the National Science Foundation, NSF
                awards \#0720882 (CSR-EHS: PRET), \#1035672 (CPS:
                Medium: Ptides), and \#0931843 (ActionWebs), the
                Naval Research Laboratory (NRL \#N0013-12-1-G015),
                and the following companies: Bosch, National
                Instruments, and Toyota).</i>
  },
      abstract = {This paper studies the semantics of models for
                discrete physical phenomena such as rigid body
                collisions. The paper combines generalized
                functions (specifically the Dirac delta function),
                superdense time, modal models, and constructive
                semantics to get a rich, flexible, efficient, and
                rigorous approach to modeling such systems. It
                shows that many physical scenarios that have been
                problematic for modeling techniques manifest as
                nonconstructive models, and that constructive
                versions of some of the models properly reflect
                uncertainty in the behavior of the physical
                systems that plausibly arise from the principles
                of quantum mechanics. The paper argues that these
                modeling difficulties are not reasonably solved by
                more detailed continuous models of the underlying
                physical phenomena. Such more detailed models
                simply shift the uncertainty to other aspects of
                the model. Since such detailed models come with a
                high computational cost, there is little
                justification in using them unless the goal of
                modeling is specifically to understand these more
                detailed physical processes. An implementation of
                these methods in the Ptolemy II modeling and
                simulation environment is described.},
      URL = {http://chess.eecs.berkeley.edu/pubs/1105.html}
  }
  

Posted by Mary Stewart on 1 Jul 2015.
Groups: actionwebs
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