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Hierarchical control of discrete-event systems

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Abstract

An abstract hierarchical control theory is developed for discrete-event systems, based on the concepts of control structures and observers. Control structure is an abstract generalization of the family of controllable sublanguages in the Ramadge-Wonham framework. We establish a general version of Zhong's hierarchical consistency by first achieving control consistency — preservation of control structures through the aggregation mapping in a two-level hierarchy. For a refinement of hierarchical consistency with preservation of nonblocking, the concept of observer is introduced via congruences on nondeterministic transition structures.

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Wong, K.C., Wonham, W.M. Hierarchical control of discrete-event systems. Discrete Event Dyn Syst 6, 241–273 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01797154

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