SoD: A Normative Theory for the Design of Discrete Event Dynamic Systems for Supervisory Control

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

This project addresses a problem domain related to the design of Discrete Event Dynamic Systems (DEDS). The goal of the project is to identify tractable synthesis of supervisory policies that control those systems. Examples of DEDS include: air-traffic control systems; automated manufacturing systems; computer networks; integrated command, control, communication and information (C3I ) systems; operations-management of multi-component organizations with event-driven dynamics like shipyards, airports, hospitals, etc. Despite the myriad and diverse applications for DEDS, advances in core aspects of supervisory control of DEDS have not found application beyond academia, primarily due to the fact that synthesis procedures require complete specification of the desired behavior of the system, a difficult, if not impossible task. Even when complete specifications are available, the synthesis of the appropriate supervisory policy can be intractable. This project develops a normative theory of how DEDS should be structured so that, starting from a supervisory policy that enforces an incompletely specified behavior, progressive supervisory corrections can be applied such that the (complete) desired specification is eventually enforced. The supervisory policy advocated by this project is based on analysis of observed "desirable" and "undesirable" states of a system. This project focuses on three areas of DEDS: (1) Learning phase: the development of learning algorithms for supervisory systems where desired behavior can be easily earned/identified using examples/counter-examples, (2) Supervisory policy synthesis phase: the identification of DEDS structures where learning is tractable, and (3) Progressive improvement phase: the development of methods for improving learned behavior that can be progressively improved with little computational effort as additional information is made available. The successful resolution of the open research topics related to this project may mean that idiosyncratic problems in each of the examples of DEDS described above (air-traffic bottlenecks, dead-lock/live-lock in automated manufacturing, poor quality of service in networks, poor triage services in the emergency room of a hospital, etc.) could be eliminated.