Interpreted Higher-Dimensional Automata for Concurrent Discrete-Event Control

TL;DR

This paper adapts Higher Dimensional Automata (HDA) to transform interpreted Petri nets into closed-loop controllers, addressing concurrency issues and revealing hidden specification conflicts, demonstrated through an industrial case study.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of HDA for controller synthesis from interpreted Petri nets, improving detection of ambiguities and contradictions in specifications.

Findings

HDA can effectively transform IPNs into controllers.

The approach reveals hidden conflicts in system specifications.

Demonstrated feasibility with an industrial example.

Abstract

In recent years the theory of Higher Dimensional Automata (HDA) has seen significant advances from a theoretical point of view, reflecting standard automata theory. There have also been first attempts to use the mathematical framework provided by HDAs to known problems, in particular Petri Net analysis. However real-world applications are still lacking and issues from real-world system, as concurrency, is still opened in the context of controller generation. In this work we show how the framework of HDAs can be adapted to help transforming controllers given as interpreted Petri nets (IPN) into an actual closed loop controller and how the HDA helps in identifying ambiguous or even contradictory specifications that remain hidden in the IPN. We demonstrate the feasibility by connecting the obtain controller to a virtual environment for closed loop control, exemplified by an industrial example.