Overview of Controllability Definitions in Supervisory Control Theory

Abstract: In the field of supervisory control theory, the literature often proposes different definitions for the same concept, making it difficult to understand how these definitions are related. This is definitely so for the fundamental notion of controllability of a supervisor w.r.t. a plant. This paper lists definitions of controllability found in the literature and studies their relationships in settings of both deterministic and nondeterministic automata. In the general context, where both the supervisor and the plant are allowed to be nondeterministic, the notions of controllability as described by Flordal and Malik, and uncontrollable event admissibility by Kushi and Takai are equivalent. These are also the only notions that imply the traditional notion of (language) controllability. From a practical perspective, one is often more interested in controllability of a supervised plant w.r.t. a plant. In this context, in addition to the previous two controllability notions, state controllability by Zhou et al. implies language controllability.