http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/21977809

Aggregation and Multi-Level Control in Discrete Event Dynamic Systems

In this paper we consider the problem of higher-level aggregate modelling and control of discrete-event dynamic systems (DEDS) modelled as finite state automata in which some events are controllable, some are observed, and some represent events to be tracked. The higher-level models considered correspond to associating specified sequences of events in the original system to single macroscopic events in the higher- level model. We also consider the problem of designing a compensator that can be used to restrict microscopic behavior so that the system will only produce strings of these primitive sequences or tasks. With this lower level control in place we can construct higher-level models which typically have many fewer states and events than the original system. Also, motivated by applications such as flexible manufacturing, we address the problem of constructing and controlling higher-level models of interconnections of DEDS. This allows us to "slow down" the combinatorial explosion typically present in computations involving interacting automata.

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