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DES Synthesis Tool: SuSyNA (Supervisor Synthesis for Nondeterministic Automata)

Course Materials on Supervisory Control of Discrete-Event Systems (EE6226)

In this course we will embark on an journey to explore discrete event modeling and supervisory control theory. The term of "Discrete Event System" was coined by Prof Larry Ho at Harvard University, aiming to describe systems driven by discrete events instead of (continuous) time only. Since then, rich theories have been developed by many researchers, addressing topics of modeling, analysis, control and optimization. Typical research areas include, e.g., supervisory control, fault diagnosis, queueing theory, max-plus algebra, process algebra, etc. They are arguably able to describe most man-made systems, as those are event driven by nature, and traditionally are applicable to manufacturing systems and logistic systems. Recently, researchers start to apply them to multi-agent robotic systems such as autonomous vehicles and UAVs. In this course I will give an overview of discrete event modeling in terms of regular languages and finite-state automata, and then introduce several supervisory control architectures in the Ramadge-Wonham paradigm, which was originated by Peter Ramadge (at Princeton University) and Murray Wonham (at University of Toronto), with realistic case studies to illustrate their usefulness. Students will have opportunities to use tools to build their own discrete event models of relevant realistic systems and synthesize proper supervisors for them. Invited lectures by some world renowned researchers will also be organized during the course on suitable topics.