Computation of Fault-Tolerant Supervisors for Discrete Event Systems*

Fault-tolerance addresses the problem of operating a system even in case of faults. In this paper, we study fault-tolerance in the supervisory control framework for discrete event systems (DES). We consider DES, where certain events might no longer be possible in case a fault happens. In this setting, we first identify necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a supervisor that realizes a given behavioral specification both in the non-faulty and in the faulty case. We further show that it is possible to determine a supremal fault-tolerant sublanguage in case the existence condition is violated. Finally, we propose an algorithm for the computation of this sublanguage and prove its correctness. Different from existing work, our fault-tolerant supervisor allows fault occurrences and system repairs at any time. The concepts and results developed in this paper are illustrated by a manufacturing system example.