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Most nondeterministic automata models are more expressive, or at least more succinct, than their deterministic counterparts; however, this comes at a cost, as deterministic automata tend to have better algorithmic properties. History-deterministic automata are an intermediate model that allows a restricted form of nondeterminism: all nondeterministic choices must be resolvable on-the-fly, with only the knowledge of the word prefix read so far - as opposed to general nondeterminism, which allows for guessing the future of the word. History-deterministic automata combine some of the algorithmic benefits of determinism with some of the increased power of nondeterminism, thus enjoying (some of) the best of both worlds. History-determinism, as it is understood today, has its roots in several independently invented notions: Kupferman, Safra and Vardi’s automata recognising tree languages derived from word languages [Kupferman et al., 2006] (a notion that has been later referred to as automata that are good-for-trees [Udi Boker et al., 2013]), Henzinger and Piterman’s good-for-games automata [Thomas Henzinger and Nir Piterman, 2006], and Colcombet’s history-deterministic automata, introduced in his work on regular cost-automata [Colcombet, 2009]. In the ω-regular setting, where they were initially most studied, the notions of good-for-trees, good-for-games and history-determinism are equivalent, despite differences in their definitions. The key algorithmic appeal of these automata is that like deterministic automata, they have good compositional properties. This makes them particularly useful for applications such as reactive synthesis, where composition of games and automata is at the heart of effective solutions. Since then, history-determinism has received its fair share of attention, not least because of its relevance to synthesis. Indeed it turns out to be a natural and useful form of nondeterminism more broadly, and can be generalised to all sorts of different automata models: alternating automata [Udi Boker and Karoliina Lehtinen, 2019], pushdown automata [Enzo Erlich et al., 2022; Enzo Erlich et al., 2022], timed automata [Thomas A. Henzinger et al., 2022; Sougata Bose et al., 2022], Parikh automata [Enzo Erlich et al., 2022], and quantiative automata [Udi Boker and Karoliina Lehtinen, 2021], to name a few. In each of these models, history-determinism offers some trade-offs between the power of nondeterminism and the algorithmic properties of determinism. In particular, depending on the model, they can be either more expressive or more succinct than their deterministic counterparts, while retaining better algorithmic properties - in particular with respect to deciding universality, language inclusion and games - than fully nondeterministic automata. The drive to extend history-determinism to more powerful automata models has also lead to a better understanding of the properties of these automata, of how they compare to related notions (such as good-for-games automata and determinisability by pruning), and of the various games and tools used to study them. This talk aims to give a broad introduction to the notion of history determinism as well as an overview of some of the recent developements on the topic. It will also highlight some of the many problems that remain open. It is loosely based on a recent survey, written jointly with Udi Boker, which gives an informal presentation of what are, in our view, the key aspects of history-determinism [Udi Boker and Karoliina Lehtinen, 2023]., LIPIcs, Vol. 254, 40th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2023), pages 1:1-1:2

We explore the notion of history-determinism in the context of timed automata (TA). History-deterministic automata are those in which nondeterminism can be resolved on the fly, based on the run constructed thus far. History-determinism is a robust property that admits different game-based characterisations, and history-deterministic specifications allow for game-based verification without an expensive determinization step. We show yet another characterisation of history-determinism in terms of fair simulation, at the general level of labelled transition systems: a system is history-deterministic precisely if and only if it fairly simulates all language smaller systems. For timed automata over infinite timed words it is known that universality is undecidable for Büchi TA. We show that for history-deterministic TA with arbitrary parity acceptance, timed universality, inclusion, and synthesis all remain decidable and are ExpTime-complete. For the subclass of TA with safety or reachability acceptance, we show that checking whether such an automaton is history-deterministic is decidable (in ExpTime), and history-deterministic TA with safety acceptance are effectively determinizable without introducing new automata states., LIPIcs, Vol. 243, 33rd International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2022), pages 14:1-14:21

We study the expressiveness and succinctness of good-for-games pushdown automata (GFG-PDA) over finite words, that is, pushdown automata whose nondeterminism can be resolved based on the run constructed so far, but independently of the remainder of the input word. We prove that GFG-PDA recognise more languages than deterministic PDA (DPDA) but not all context-free languages (CFL). This class is orthogonal to unambiguous CFL. We further show that GFG-PDA can be exponentially more succinct than DPDA, while PDA can be double-exponentially more succinct than GFG-PDA. We also study GFGness in visibly pushdown automata (VPA), which enjoy better closure properties than PDA, and for which we show GFGness to be ExpTime-complete. GFG-VPA can be exponentially more succinct than deterministic VPA, while VPA can be exponentially more succinct than GFG-VPA. Both of these lower bounds are tight. Finally, we study the complexity of resolving nondeterminism in GFG-PDA. Every GFG-PDA has a positional resolver, a function that resolves nondeterminism and that is only dependant on the current configuration. Pushdown transducers are sufficient to implement the resolvers of GFG-VPA, but not those of GFG-PDA. GFG-PDA with finite-state resolvers are determinisable., LIPIcs, Vol. 202, 46th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2021), pages 53:1-53:20

International audience; Good-for-Games (GFG) automata offer a compromise between deterministic and nondetermin-istic automata. They can resolve nondeterministic choices in a step-by-step fashion, without needing any information about the remaining suffix of the word. These automata can be used to solve games with ω-regular conditions, and in particular were introduced as a tool to solve Church's synthesis problem. We focus here on the problem of recognizing Büchi GFG automata, that we call Büchi GFGness problem: given a nondeterministic Büchi automaton, is it GFG? We show that this problem can be decided in P, and more precisely in O(n^4 m^2 |Σ|^2) , where n is the number of states, m the number of transitions and |Σ| is the size of the alphabet. We conjecture that a very similar algorithm solves the problem in polynomial time for any fixed parity acceptance condition.

International audience; We introduce a measure called width, quantifying the amount of nondeterminism in automata. Width generalises the notion of good-for-games (GFG) automata, that correspond to NFAs of width 1, and where an accepting run can be built on-the-fly on any accepted input. We describe an incremental determinisation construction on NFAs, which can be more efficient than the full powerset determinisation, depending on the width of the input NFA. This construction can be generalised to infinite words, and is particularly well-suited to coBüchi automata in this context. For coBüchi automata, this procedure can be used to compute either a deterministic automaton or a GFG one, and it is algorithmically more efficient in this last case. We show this fact by proving that checking whether a coBüchi automaton is determinisable by pruning is NP-complete. On finite or infinite words, we show that computing the width of an automaton is PSPACE-hard. 1 Introduction Determinisation of non-deterministic automata (NFAs) is one of the cornerstone problems of automata theory, with countless applications in verification. There is a very active field of research for optimizing or approximating determinisation, or circumventing it in contexts like inclusion of NFA or Church Synthesis. Indeed, determinisation is a costly operation, as the state space blow-up is in O(2 n) on finite words, O(3 n) for coBüchi automata [16], and 2 O(n log(n)) for Büchi automata [17]. If A and B are NFAs, the classical way of checking the inclusion L(A) ⊆ L(B) is to determinise B, complement it, and test emptiness of L(A) ∩ L(B). To circumvent a full determinisation, the recent algorithm from [3] proved to be very efficient, as it is likely to explore only a part of the powerset construction. Other approaches use simulation games to approximate inclusion at a cheaper cost, see for instance [8]. Another approach consists in replacing determinism by a weaker constraint that suffices in some particular context. In this spirit, Good-for-Games automata (GFG for short) were introduced in [9], as a way to solve the Church synthesis problem. This problem asks, given a specification L, typically given by an LTL formula, over an alphabet of inputs and outputs, whether there is a reactive system (transducer) whose behaviour is included in L. The classical solution computes a deterministic automaton for L, and solves a game defined on this automaton. It turns out that replacing determinism by the weaker constraint of being GFG is sufficient in this context. Intuitively, GFG automata are non-deterministic * This work was supported by the grant PALSE Impulsion.

We introduce good-for-games $ω$-pushdown automata ($ω$-GFG-PDA). These are automata whose nondeterminism can be resolved based on the input processed so far. Good-for-gameness enables automata to be composed with games, trees, and other automata, applications which otherwise require deterministic automata. Our main results are that $ω$-GFG-PDA are more expressive than deterministic $ω$- pushdown automata and that solving infinite games with winning conditions specified by $ω$-GFG-PDA is EXPTIME-complete. Thus, we have identified a new class of $ω$-contextfree winning conditions for which solving games is decidable. It follows that the universality problem for $ω$-GFG-PDA is in EXPTIME as well. Moreover, we study closure properties of the class of languages recognized by $ω$-GFG- PDA and decidability of good-for-gameness of $ω$-pushdown automata and languages. Finally, we compare $ω$-GFG-PDA to $ω$-visibly PDA, study the resources necessary to resolve the nondeterminism in $ω$-GFG-PDA, and prove that the parity index hierarchy for $ω$-GFG-PDA is infinite. This is a corrected version of the paper arXiv:2001.04392v6 published originally on January 7, 2022.