Petri net in intelligent machines and control

Abstract

The use of Petri net in intelligent control has caught the attention of many researchers. In this paper, some main versions of Petri nets, such as colored Petri nets, timed Petri nets, stochastic Petri nets and controlled Petri nets will be briefly reviewed. Two of the most promising areas for Petri net application: flexible manufacturing system (FMS) control and machine intelligence will be emphasized. FMS is a kind of system that its states can be characterized by a set of distinctly separated status of the working components in the system, and at this level (on which the notation FMS is stressing), we are mostly interested in the logical performance of the model, rather than how these states are changed. We will see that Petri net is the most suitable formalism for FMS modeling. Petri net has also been chosen as a modeling tool for intelligent machines, which in turn performs the functions of intelligent control.