Discrete Event Dynamic Systems: An Overview

In this report we present an overview for the development of a theory for discrete event dynamic systems (DEDS). Dynamic systems are usually modeled by finite state automata with partially overservable events together with a mechanism for enabling and disabling a subset of state transitions. DEDS are attracting considerable interests, current applications are found in manufacturing systems, communications and air traffic systems, future applications will include robotics, computer vision and AI. We will discuss notions of modeling, stability issues, observability, feedback and invertibility. We will also discuss the perturbation analysis technique (PA) for analyzing and describing the behavior of DEDs.