ACTS--A Concurrency Tool Suite

The ACTS project involves the development of software that applies methods of supervisory control to the automatic synthesis of concurrent progrsms. Supervisory control is applied here in order to address issues arising in the context of concurrency, such as mutual exclusion, liveness, and fairness. Specifications are processed in three stages, as follows. First, based on an input describing concurrent processes, synchronization constraints, and other requirements, the software obtains a Petri net model. Second, supervisory control methods are applied in order to the control specifications. Finally, based on the specified description of the concurrent processes and the control logic synthesized by the supervisory control methods, code is generated. While this approach is not limited to a particular language or operating system, at this time the software is written for Unix and the C language.

The project involves LeTourneau University and University of Notre Dame. The support of the National Science Fundation is gratefully acknowledged (NSF CNS-0834057).

The software is currently under development. The source code can be accessed at http:\\sourceforge.net\projects\pntool.

References related to this work are as follows.

• A brief introduction to the topic can be found in this presentation.
• A description of the project is available in this technical report.
• The following survey describes related literature results.
  Iordache M. V. and P. J. Antsaklis (2009), "Petri Nets and Programming: A Survey," in the Proceedings of the 2009 American Control Conference, pp. 4994--4999.

While this project is not limited to a particular set of methods of supervisory control, currently the software implements methods of the supervision based on place invariants. Some reachability based methods will also be implemented. Future implementation of other supervisory control approaches would be very desirable, in order to enhance the capabilities of the software. Main references of the supervisory control methods cuurently implemented are as follows.

• Iordache M. V. and P. J. Antsaklis (2006), Supervisory Control of Concurrent Systems: A Petri Net Structural Approach, Birkhauser Boston.
• Iordache M. V. and P. J. Antsaklis (2006), "Supervision Based on Place Invariants: A Survey," in Discrete Event Dynamic Systems, 16, pp. 451--492.
• Iordache M. V. and P. J. Antsaklis (2002), Software Tools for the Supervisory Control of Petri Nets Based on Place Invariants, Technical Report of the ISIS Group, ISIS-2002-003, University of Notre Dame.