A Petri net based single chip programmable controller for distributed local controls

A low-cost flexible and efficient programmable logic controller is described. Its hardware is based on a monochip controller, resulting in a low-cost realization, and its software is based on a formal specification tool using interpreted Petri nets and a real-time interpreter. Using such a method, it is possible to validate a specification before its implementation, to implement an application without any code generation (easy monitoring and debugging), and to take advantage of Petri nets relating to distributed implementations