Supervisory control of discrete-event processes with partial observations

Extends certain aspects of the work of P.J. Ramadge and W.M. Wonham (see SIAM J. Control Optimiz., vol.25, Jan. 1987) on the control of a class of discrete-event processes. The controlled process is described by a language L having strings that specify the sequences of events σ₁ . . . σ_n that the process can execute. The controller makes partial observations on the process events. Based on these observations the controller must enable or disable certain process events so that the resulting language generated by the closed-loop process is the specified sublanguage K ⊂L. The case of decentralized control in which there are several controllers each of which makes partial observations and controls a subset of the process events is also studied. The results are illustrated for an example of communication protocols