A State-Variable Approach for Controlling Discrete Event Systems with Infinite States

In this paper we study suitability of using assignment based programming language for supervisory control of discrete event systems. We first show that the supervisory control problem in its general setting is undecidable. Next we show that the supervisory control problem for discrete event systems modeled by assignment based programs is decidable and develop techniques which reduce the supervisory control problem of such systems to that of solving arithmetic equations. We first apply these techniques for synthesis of static controllers.