Minimum-time control for structurally persistent continuous Petri Nets

This paper addresses the minimum-time control problem of structurally persistent timed continuous Petri Net systems (ContPN). In particular, an ON-OFF controller is proposed to drive the system from a given initial marking (state) to the desired (final) marking in minimum-time. The controller is developed first for the discrete-time system ensuring that all transitions are fired as fast as possible in each sampling period until the required total firing counts are reached. After that, they are stopped suddenly. By taking the limit of the sampling period, the controller for continuous-time systems is obtained. Simplicity and the fact that it ensures minimum-time are the main advantages of the controller.