Synthesis of behavioral controllers for Discrete Event Systems with NCES-like Petri net models

This paper presents an approach to the synthesis of behavioral controllers for Discrete Event Systems given a Petri net based plant model and linear safety and goal constraints. First, the model of the uncontrolled plant is converted into a set of so called unified transitions, which have linear constraints on the net marking as preconditions and a change of marking as firing effect. Based on this set, an algorithm is presented to find paths from a given start marking or a set of start markings to markings fulfilling the goal constraints, while staying within a feasible marking set given by linear safety constraints. The presented algorithm makes use of characteristics typically found in plant models to perform a guided search for feasible paths and thereby significantly improves efficiency in comparison to computing the whole reachability graph.