Deadlock Control of Automated Manufacturing Systems Based on Petri Nets-A Literature Review

• Published in: IEEE transactions on systems, man and cybernetics. Part C, Applications and reviews Vol. 42; no. 4; pp. 437 - 462
• Main Authors: ZhiWu Li, NaiQi Wu, MengChu Zhou
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New-York, NY IEEE 01.07.2012; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface; Control systems; Control theory. Systems; Deadlock avoidance; deadlock prevention; discrete-event system; Exact sciences and technology; flexible manufacturing system (FMS); Information retrieval. Graph; Manufacturing systems; Memory and file management (including protection and security); Memory organisation. Data processing; Petri net; Petri nets; Process control. Computer integrated manufacturing; Resource management; Robots; Software; System recovery; Theoretical computing; Policy; Supervisor; discrete-event system; deadlock prevention; Critical system; Computer integrated manufacturing; Process control; Resource allocation; Control synthesis; Graph theory; Review; Computational complexity; Deadlock; Deadlock avoidance; Behavioral analysis; Flexible manufacturing system; flexible manufacturing system (FMS); Permissiveness; Computer security; Supervision; Petri net; Discrete event system
• ISSN: 1094-6977; 1558-2442
• DOI: 10.1109/TSMCC.2011.2160626

Deadlocks are a rather undesirable situation in a highly automated flexible manufacturing system. Their occurrences often deteriorate the utilization of resources and may lead to catastrophic results in safety-critical systems. Graph theory, automata, and Petri nets are three important mathematical tools to handle deadlock problems in resource allocation systems. Particularly, Petri nets are considered as a popular formalism because of their inherent characteristics. They received much attention over the past decades to deal with deadlock problems, leading to a variety of deadlock-control policies. This study surveys the state-of-the-art deadlock-control strategies for automated manufacturing systems by reviewing the principles and techniques that are involved in preventing, avoiding, and detecting deadlocks. The focus is deadlock prevention due to its large and continuing stream of efforts. A control strategy is evaluated in terms of computational complexity, behavioral permissiveness, and structural complexity of its deadlock-free supervisor. This study provides readers with a conglomeration of the updated results in this area and facilitates engineers in finding a suitable approach for their industrial scenarios. Future research directions are finally discussed.