Hierarchical coordination

Coordination usually refers to organizing joint actions among participating systems to produce a result. The hierarchical coordination of independent systems modeled by automata in the Ramadge-Wonham framework (1987) is introduced. The setup features a high-level coordinator that regulates, in a common language, low-level operators to cooperate in achieving a common goal. Each low-level operator enforces a corresponding local control requirement but must refer to the high-level coordinator to coordinate commands. It is shown that for delay-free systems, consistent feedback control is achieved in the combined system of coordinator and local controllers