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A Supervisory Control Theoretic Approach to the Analysis of Democratic Progress

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  • Control Theory and Applications
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Abstract

In this paper, we show that supervisory control theory of discrete event systems can serve as a methodology to analyze the principle of democratic progress. For this purpose, we address a new supervisory control problem in which each local supervisor is designed with its own private specification, and an additional progressive specification is given as a global objective for a system to follow. We present the controllability and power-observability as the main conditions for a controlled system to meet a progressive specification in the sense that the number of local supervisors meeting private specifications increases as the controlled system evolves. We then demonstrate that the developed theory can be used to analyze the principle of democratic progress in a systematical way through a case study of labor unions in the Unites States.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ajou University, 206 Worldcup-ro, Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, 16499, Korea

    Seong-Jin Park

  2. School of Electronics Engineering, Kyungpook National University, 80 Daehak-ro, Buk-gu, Daegu, 41566, Korea

    Jung-Min Yang

Authors
  1. Seong-Jin Park
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  2. Jung-Min Yang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jung-Min Yang.

Additional information

Recommended by Associate Editor M. Chadli under the direction of Editor Jessie (Ju H.) Park. The research of Seong-Jin Park was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (No. 2016R1A2B4006723). The research of Jung-Min Yang was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (No. 2015R1D1A1A01056764) and by the Ministry of Science, ICT and future Planning (No. 2015R1A2A1A15054026).

Seong-Jin Park received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea, in 1994, 1997, and 2001, respectively. From September 2001 to February 2004, he was a senior engineer in the Telecommunication Division, Samsung Electronics, Korea. In March 2004, he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ajou University, Korea, where he is currently a professor. His research interest is in supervisory control of discrete-event systems.

Jung-Min Yang received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea, in 1993, 1995, and 1999, respectively. Since 2013, he has been with the School of Electronics Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea, where he is currently a professor. His research interests are in control of asynchronous sequential machines, supervisory control of discrete-event systems, and control of complex networks.

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Park, SJ., Yang, JM. A Supervisory Control Theoretic Approach to the Analysis of Democratic Progress. Int. J. Control Autom. Syst. 16, 452–460 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-017-0030-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-017-0030-5

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