Discrete Event Systems: The State of the Art and New Directions

The goal of this chapter is to present some perspectives on current and future research directions in the area of discrete event systems. For the benefit of readers unfamiliar with this field, we start with a brief survey of the modeling of discrete event systems along with some key results from the last decade that define the state of the art. We then comment on some new challenges for the “next generation” of discrete event system theory, highlighting issues of complexity and uncertainty, the emergence of hybrid systems, and the need for optimal control. Recent research on some of these issues is then discussed in more detail in four sections treating decentralized control and optimization, failure diagnosis, nondeterministic supervisory control, and hybrid systems and optimal control.