Differential Petri net models for industrial automation and supervisory control

Supervisory control systems play a central role in modern industrial automation. However, control theory has recently made significant advances in modeling mixed continuous/discrete event systems ("hybrid control systems"), whose typical instantiations include the industrial supervisory controller. This article shows how differential Petri nets, a model for hybrid control systems, can be used to represent industrial supervisory systems in a unified way. Typical industrial automation tests can be modeled, whereas the effect of communication protocols and software can be straightforwardly included using conventional Petri nets. Therefore, a global model for the operation of an industrial control system can be formed and its behavior analyzed