A Supervisory Control Algorithm Based on Property-Directed Reachability
It addresses the problem of controller synthesis for discrete event systems in automation and manufacturing, but the results are preliminary and incremental.
The paper adapts the property-directed reachability (PDR) algorithm to synthesize a safe and minimally-restrictive controller for discrete event systems, with experimental results showing potential for formal supervisory control synthesis.
We present an algorithm for synthesising a controller (supervisor) for a discrete event system (DES) based on the property-directed reachability (PDR) model checking algorithm. The discrete event systems framework is useful in both software, automation and manufacturing, as problems from those domains can be modelled as discrete supervisory control problems. As a formal framework, DES is also similar to domains for which the field of formal methods for computer science has developed techniques and tools. In this paper, we attempt to marry the two by adapting PDR to the problem of controller synthesis. The resulting algorithm takes as input a transition system with forbidden states and uncontrollable transitions, and synthesises a safe and minimally-restrictive controller, correct-by-design. We also present an implementation along with experimental results, showing that the algorithm has potential as a part of the solution to the greater effort of formal supervisory controller synthesis and verification.