Multiple vehicles mission coordination using Petri nets

This paper provides a methodology to model and execute coordinated missions involving multiple vehicles using Petri nets. Individual vehicle missions are defined by means of Petri nets and three constraints are added for coordination purposes: mutual exclusion, ordering and synchronisation. The proposed methodology generates a centralised net, checks if it is deadlock free and then obtains a decentralised Petri net for every vehicle minimising the communication between them. The resulting Petri nets implement the multi-vehicle mission control program that is responsible for coordinating in real-time the set of vehicles involved in the mission.