Genetic programming synthesis of discrete event controllers applied to urban vehicle traffic control

The paper presents a new method for generating discrete event systems as control units for a type of plants which can be modeled as delay time Petri nets. The control unit contains many transitions joined together by a set of operands and it is generated by means of the genetic programming method using a Lisp representation of the solution. Transitions are characterized by an enabling condition (reaction or feedback) and an effect (control), which represent the interaction with the plant. Crossover and mutation operators are defined for Lisp expressions. The method is applied to urban vehicle traffic control.