Special issue on Discrete Event Systems for Automation

A special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering

Introduction

In recent years, the enormous evolution of computer technology has led to the proliferation of dynamical systems that are mostly man made and highly complex. The behaviour of these systems is determined by the occurrence of asynchronous events: because of this attribute they are labeled as Discrete Event Systems (DES). Examples of such systems are encountered in many well known application areas such as automated manufacturing, computer networks, transportation, air traffic control, as well as in new emerging areas such as healthcare, communication and information processing, allocation and management of technical, human and financial resources. In the last decades the attention of a large number of researchers and practitioners has been devoted to this class of dynamical systems in order to address a series of difficult problems of combinatorial nature to analyze, optimize and control DES.
The goal of this special issue is to bring together researchers and practitioners from both academia and industry into a forum that will reveal the state-of-the-art of research and applications in the general area of DES automation, present efficient scientific and engineering solutions to a series of problems related to supervisory control, fault diagnosis, analysis, etc., and provide visions for future research and development.

Scope, description and more information

The proposed special issue focuses on new approaches and future directions in automation science and engineering in the DES framework. A series of problems that arise in all systems with a high degree of automation will be considered including supervisory control, optimal resource allocation, fault diagnosis, state estimation, deadlock prevention and recovery. A large effort has been devoted to these topics in the last decades. However, many theoretical problems in this framework are still open, or their application is only limited to small case studies, while their application to problems of industrial relevance still remains a challenge. Moreover, a series of emerging areas such as healthcare and power distribution, deserve the attention of the DES communities since many aspects in their framework can be effectively formulated in terms of DES, taking advantage of the large amount of theoretical and methodological results in this area.
Particular attention will also be devoted to new models for abstracting discrete-event systems, such as event-driven fluid models. Many such models have already been derived by the fluidification of queuing networks or Petri nets, and used to solve simulation, optimization and control problems, and to model manufacturing and transportation systems. However, the usefulness of fluidification in the solution of other problems such as fault diagnosis or state estimation, has been investigated by very few authors, and the application of discrete-event based fluid models to new emerging areas is practically unexplored.
Original and unpublished high-quality research and application results are solicited. The target submissions could also present academic surveys and reviews that summarize state-of-the-art theories and practices in this area. Topics to be covered include, but are not limited to:

To submit a paper, go here

Important dates
Call for papers October 15, 2011
Deadline for paper submission September 01, 2012
First review January 31, 2013
Final review September 01, 2013
Publication December 2013

Guest editors

MariaPia Fanti

Guest editor

  Politecnico di Bari, Dipartimento di Elettrotecnica ed Elettronica
Flag of Italy Bari, Italy
Phone +39805460486 Skype
Fax +39805460410 Website http://www-dee.poliba.it/dee-web/Personale/fanti.html
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Spyros Reveliotis

Guest editor

  Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Industrial & Systems Engineering
Flag of United States Atlanta (GA), United States
Phone +1 404 894 6608 Skype
Fax +1 404 894 2301 Website http://www.isye.gatech.edu/~spyros
E-mail spyros@isye.gatech.edu Linkedin

Carla Seatzu

Guest editor

  University of Cagliari, Dep. of Electrical and Electronics Eng.
Flag of Italy Italy
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E-mail seatzu@diee.unica.it Linkedin

Christos G. Cassandras

Guest editor

  Boston University, Center for Inf. and Systems Eng. (CISE), Division of Systems Eng.
Flag of United States United States
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Fax Website
E-mail cgc@bu.edu Linkedin

Christoforos Hadjicostis

Guest editor

  University of Cyprus, Dep. of Electrical and Computer Eng.
Flag of Cyprus Cyprus
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E-mail chadjic@ucy.ac.cy Linkedin