Abstractions for nonblocking supervisory control of Extended Finite Automata

An abstraction method for Extended Finite Automata (EFAs), i.e., finite automata extended with variables, using transition projection is presented in this work. A manufacturing system modeled by EFAs is abstracted into subsystems that embody internal interacting dependencies. Synthesis and verification of subsystems are achieved through their model abstractions rather than their global model. Sufficient conditions are presented to guarantee that supervisors result in maximally permissive and nonblocking control. An examples demonstrate the computational effectiveness and practical usage of the approach.