An Optimal Directed Control Framework for Discrete Event Systems

In an earlier paper, we introduced the notion of directed control, where a directed controller, which is simply referred to as a director, is one that selects at most one controllable event to be enabled at any instant. In this paper, we develop an optimization-based approach for the design of a director: starting from any state, the worst cost to the nearest reachable marked state is minimized. The motivation is that a pending task can be completed in the least possible cost. A necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of an optimal director is obtained. Furthermore, for systems that are cycle-free, we provide an algorithm of polynomial complexity to compute an optimal director.