Supervisor Synthesis for Multi-Agent Systems With Mutually Exclusive Resources

In multi-agent systems (MAS), it is a basic mission to coordinate and control each agent to complete tasks on mutually exclusive resources due to the high cost of some hardware and software in reality. In supervisory control theory (SCT) of discrete-event systems (DES), a supremal supervisor is synthesized with respect to the system and all the specifications to make the system act as desired. However, the size of the plant model increases exponentially with the number of agents in MAS. To alleviate the state explosion problem when applying SCT to MAS, a synchronous product with constraints using bread-first search strategy is proposed to synthesize a supervisor for the system with respect to the mutex resources. And a framework for computing the supremal supervisor for the entire MAS with respect to all the specifications is presented. Experiments are studied to estimate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Contributions of the research are two-fold. Firstly, the state explosion problem associated with supervisory control of MAS is alleviated in a certain extent. Secondly, compared with decentralized or distributed control, it is not necessary to design a coordinator additionally.

Automated summary

In multi-agent systems, coordinating and controlling each agent to complete tasks on mutually exclusive resources is a basic mission due to the high cost of some hardware and software in reality. However, when applying supervisory control theory (SCT) to MAS, the size of the plant model increases exponentially with the number of agents, leading to a state explosion problem. To address this issue, a synchronous product with constraints and a framework for computing the supremal supervisor for the entire MAS are proposed. Experimental studies show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The research contributes to mitigating the state explosion problem in supervisory control of MAS and eliminates the need for an additional coordinator compared to decentralized or distributed control.