Active Automata Learning with Advice

Abstract: We present an extended automata learning framework that combines active automata learning with deductive inference. The learning algorithm asks membership and equivalence queries as in the original framework, but it is also given advice, which is used to infer answers to queries when possible and reduce the burden on the teacher. We consider advice given via string rewriting systems, which specify equivalence of words w.r.t. the target languages. The main motivation for the proposed framework is to reduce the number of queries. We show how to adapt Angluin-style learning algorithms to this framework with low overhead. Finally, we present empirical evaluation of our approach and observe substantial improvement in query complexity.