A Formalisation of Automation Petri Nets for Control and Marked Matrix Logic Controllers

Grafcet, and more recently IEC1131-3 SFC, have sought to provide a standardised, easy to interpret graphical programming technique for programming Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). Both techniques represent attempts to modify Petri nets to make them applicable to sequential control tasks. However, both depart significantly from the Petri net paradigm. In this paper Automation Petri Nets for Control (APNC) are defined which retain more of the features of generalised Petri nets. Marked Matrix Equations are presented for APNCs which naturally generate Marked Metric Logic Controllers. These are easily implemented on industrial and embedded PC's in high level programming languages.