Fault-tolerant controller design for automated guided vehicle systems based on Petri nets

In this paper, we propose an approach for the design of fault-tolerant controllers for automated guided vehicle systems (AGVs) that are modeled by Petri nets. In particular, we consider multiple faults detection and identification in Petri nets that have state machine structures (i.e., every transition in the net has only one input place and one output place). We develop an approximation algorithm to design the fault-tolerant Petri net controller so as to minimize the sum of the arc weights in the (input and output) incident matrices of the redundant controller. A design example for an AGV system is also provided to illustrate our approach.