In: Automatica, Vol. 30, No. 9, pages 1421-1427. 1994.
Abstract: Hybrid systems, intrinsic to intelligent control, consist of interacting decision-makers/supervisors and continuous/discrete system dynamics. The decision-maker monitors the continuous/discrete-time system and supervises/controls its behavior, for example by switching among possible system structures. This paper illustrates the control and modeling of the macroscopic behavior of a three-switched system (three possible system structures) via the supervisory control of a set of symbolic dynamics of the underlying system. By partitioning the underlying system state space into regions compatible with a topologically conjugate set of symbolic dynamics, a Petri net model of the symbolic dynamics is developed for analysis of the reachability properties of the system; finally, a Petri net based supervisor is developed for moving the system from one region of the state space to another, illustrating the power of Petri net based symbolic dynamic analysis of hybrid systems.
Keywords: Petri nets, hybrid systems, supervisory control.