Decentralized Discrete Event Systems: Structure, Communication and Control (04w2040)
Organizers
Peter Caines ()
Stephane Lafortune (University of Michigan, Michigan, USA)
Laurie Ricker (Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB, Canada)
Karen Rudie (Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada)
John Thistle (Univeristy of Waterloo, ON, Canada)
Iakov Romanovski (Queen's University)
Objectives
Introduction
The progress of discrete event systems theory and its associated mathematics, and the engineering and social significance of complex controlled systems, all combine to produce a situation where it would be of great scientific value to hold a workshop at BIRS on ``Decentralized Discrete Event Systems: Structure, Communication and Control''. The objective of such a workshop would be to bring together researchers in the discrete event systems area in order that they may focus their efforts on the problems of decentralized discrete event systems. In particular, the issues of architecture, communication and control of decentralized DES will be addressed.
It is commonly agreed in the area that a set of important challenges is presented by complex systems possessing or requiring hierarchical and decentralized architectures for their organization and control. In particular, recent research has addressed the problems which arise when decentralized agents are in possession of partial information concerning a central system and are able to control some subprocesses of that system. In particular, the issues of knowledge structure, decision organization and the utility of using various forms of modal logic have received special attention. This work is itself closely linked to the well established problem area of the complexity of the design of centralized supervisory controllers for DES and its current generalized version concerning the design of decentralized controllers. As a result, the organizers of the workshop have chosen three major themes from this rapidly moving research area around which to build the meeting.
