In: Proceedings of the 5th IEEE Mediterranean Conference on Control and Systems, Session MP1, pages 1-6. July 1997.
Abstract: This paper provides an overview of a computationally efficient method for synthesizing supervisory controllers for discrete event systems (DES). The DES plant and controller are described by Petri nets which provide a useful linear algebraic model for both control analysis and synthesis. It is shown how a set of linear constraints on the plant's behavior can be enforced, accounting for possibly uncontrollable or unobservable transitions in the plant net, using techniques from Petri net theory, integer programming, and linear systems. The paper is written as a tutorial introduction to the approach. Several results presented here have been reported elsewhere in the literature.