Supervisory control of discrete-event systems

我们建议的研究属于工程和应用数学的一个分支，称为“自动控制”或有时称为“控制论”，即反馈系统的科学和技术。这样的系统被设计成将一些关键变量保持在可接受的范围内。例如，飞机的自动飞行员会纠正风力干扰，否则可能会使飞机偏离航线，可能会造成灾难性的后果。我们特别感兴趣的是系统，如交通系统，它必须对突发事件做出反应，比如车辆进入服务队列；以及制造系统，它必须对新的部件订单或机器故障做出反应。另一个例子是现代汽车中的按钮系统，尽管它是由驾车者“随机”启动的，但它的设计应该永远不会犯“挂断”或“堵塞”之类的逻辑错误。

Our proposed research lies in the branch of engineering and applied mathematics called "automatic control" or sometimes "cybernetics", namely the science and technology of feedback systems. Such systems are designed to maintain some critical variable or variables within an acceptable range. For instance, an aircraft's automatic pilot corrects for wind disturbances which might otherwise drive the plane off course, perhaps disastrously. Of specific interest to us are systems, like traffic systems, which must respond to sudden "events", like the arrival in a service queue of a vehicle; and manufacturing systems, which must respond to a new part order or machine breakdown. Another example is the pushbutton system in a modern automobile which, although "randomly" activated by the motorist, should be designed never to commit a logical error like "hangup" or blocking.