The course is a graduate-level introduction to game theory, and to its applications to system design, verification, analysis, and optimal control.
The course contains a brief introduction to 1-player games (both deterministic and probabilistic), and then considers 2-player zero-sum games. Zero-sum games model the competition between a player and an opponent, where the gain of the player is the loss of the opponent. Such games are widely used in control synthesis (controller vs. system), scheduling (scheduler vs. processes), and verification (inputs vs. outputs). The course also provides an introduction to recent developments in game theory, such as game simulation (when is a game more general, or harder to win, than another?), and real-time games (games in which players must choose the precise instant in time in which the moves are played).