Supervisory Control Synthesis in the Medical Domain

By means of Ramadge–Wonham supervisory control theory, supervisory controllers (supervisors) can be synthesized instead of designing them manually. This chapter presents an application of supervisory control to a patient support system for MRI scanners. The design process of the controller from its requirements to its actual implementation on real hardware has been done according to the synthesis-based engineering paradigm. This paradigm integrates the model-based engineering and supervisory control paradigms. The design process is supported by a tool framework that is based on the Compositional Interchange Format for hybrid systems (CIF). An experiment conducted in the course of the case-study indicates that this design process improves the evolvability of the controller significantly.