15th Triennial World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control
  Barcelona, 21–26 July 2002 
SCHEDULING OF HYBRID SYSTEMS: MULTI PRODUCT BATCH PLANT
Boštjan Potočnik*, Alberto Bemporad***,**, Fabio Danilo Torrisi**, Gašper Mušič*, Borut Zupančič*
* Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Ljubljana,
Tržaška 25, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
** Automatic Control Laboratory, ETH - Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology, CH-8092 ZÄurich, Switzerland
*** Dip. Ingegneria dell’Informazione, Università di Siena,
Via Roma 56, I-53100 Siena, Italy

The paper proposes a solution to a class of scheduling problems where the goal is to minimize the schedule (production) time. The algorithm, which takes into account a model of a hybrid system described as MLD (mixed logical dynamical) system, is based on performance driven reachability analysis. The algorithm abstracts the behavior of the hybrid system by building a tree of evolution. Nodes of the tree represent reachable states of a process, and the branches connect two nodes if a transition exists between the corresponding states. To each node a cost function value is associated and based on this value, the tree exploration is driven. As soon as the tree is explored, the global solution to the scheduling problem is obtained.
Keywords: Hybrid systems, Scheduling, Optimal control, Reachability analysis, Branch-and-bound methods
Session slot T-Fr-M09: Hybrid Systems/Area code 3c : Discrete Event Dynamic Systems