Linguistic preliminaries

Abstract

In supervisory control, formal languages provide a level of abstraction at which control concepts can be formulated in a way that is independent of any specific concrete implementation of the plant and controller. Some basic definitions are presented, leading to the Nerode equivalence relation as the bridge from a language to its dynamical state description. Emphasis is placed on regular (finite-state) languages as the class that is simplest and most directly applicable in the control context.