Supervisory controller synthesis and implementation for safety PLCs

• Published in: Discrete event dynamic systems 2022-03, Vol.32 (1), p.115-141
• Main Authors: Reijnen, Ferdie F. H., Erens, Toby R., van de Mortel-Fronczak, Joanna M., Rooda, Jacobus E.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Case studies; Control; Convex and Discrete Geometry; Cyber-physical systems; Electrical Engineering; Machines; Manufacturing; Mathematics; Mathematics and Statistics; Operations Research/Decision Theory; Processes; Programmable logic controllers; Safety; Supervisors; Supervisory control; Synthesis; Systems Theory; Topical Collection on Control 2022
• ISSN: 0924-6703; 1573-7594
• DOI: 10.1007/s10626-021-00350-4

The development of supervisory controllers for cyber-physical systems is a laborious and error-prone process. Supervisor synthesis enables control designers to automatically synthesize a correct-by-construction supervisor from a model of the plant combined with a model of the control requirements. From the supervisor model, controller code can be generated which is suitable for the implementation on a programmable logic controller (PLC). Supervisors for industrial systems that operate in close proximity to humans have to adhere to strict safety standards. To achieve these standards, safety PLCs (SPLCs) are used. For SPLC implementation, the supervisor has to be split into a regular part and a safety part. In previous work, a method is proposed to automatically split a supervisor model for this purpose. The method assumes that the provided plant model is a collection of finite automata. In this paper, the extension to extended finite automata is described. Additionally, guidelines are provided for modeling the plant and the requirements to achieve a favorable splitting. A case study on a rotating bridge is elaborated which has been used to validate the method. The case study spans all development steps, including the implementation of the resulting supervisor to control the real bridge.