A model for coordination of intelligent machines using Petri nets

A model, called coordination structure, is defined based on the framework for coordination to describe mathematically the information structure and information flow in the coordination level of intelligent machines. A Petri net transducer (PNT), which permits the description of concurrency and conflict, is introduced to model the dispatcher and coordinators with their ability to select the appropriate control actions among the alternatives corresponding to the nondeterministic property of the PNT. Synchronous composition of the PNTs is also defined to describe the synchronous operations of coordinators. The Petri net derived from the coordination structure underlies the precedence relationship of the information processing in the coordination level and provides the concepts and methods in Petri net theory for the analysis of various structure properties of coordination. It is shown that the liveness and boundedness of the entire coordination structure are guaranteed by the liveness and boundedness of the dispatcher and coordinators. Some results on the language properties of the PNT are also presented.<>