The study of automata with probabilistic behaviour began with Rabin (1963). Using transition systems as models, specifying their behaviour using formulas of temporal logic and checking that such a system satisfies its specification was formulated by Hansson and Jonsson (1994) and by Bianco and de Alfaro (in FSTTCS 1995). Unlike the key idea on which non-probabilistic model checking is based, emptiness of probabilistic automata is undecidable, shown by Paz (1971).
