ITMO University
“Programming Technologies” Department

Message exchange mechanism for automata working parallel (on turnstile control system example)

(C) 2003 Alshevsky U.A., Raer M.G., Shalyto A.A

Saint-Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics

Here you can download full documentation in pdf format (720Kb)
Here you can download executable file archive in zip format (81 Kb)
Here you can download sources archive in zip format (53 Kb)

Annotation

For algorithmization the tasks of logical control there was offered a SWITCH.technology. For solving such problems automata working parallel weren’t taken up.

There’s offered to use automata working parallel (parallel automata), which cooperate with each other by messages exchanging in this work. That reminds such field of parallel counting as shared programming, where processes also interact using messages exchanging.

The purpose of the work is to take up a variant of extension of the object-oriented programming with free occurrence dedication of states ideology to the cases of presence automata working parallel. It’s shown in a creation the control system for turnstile, controlling passing of the passengers as an example.

There are three problems, which emerge while designing parallel automata systems:

• cooperation of automata;
• synchronization of automata;
• logging their work.

These problems have been solved in this work. Note, that suggested approach inherits all advantages of SWITCH-technology. They are centralization of logic control and isomorphism between code and transition graphs of automata. It makes reading, modification, writing documentation and debugging of programs be easier.

To demonstrate the work of the control system there was created a visualizer, imitating the work of the turnstile.

The project is written using Visual C++ language with Microsoft Foundation Classes and works under Microsoft Windows operating system management in one thread.

To make the process of program debugging be easier and to help to understand the mechanism of parallel automata interaction the logging for each automaton was created.

This work is made under idea of Open Project Documentation movement(http://is.ifmo.ru). Sources are opened too.

This work won in town universities competition of course and graduation papers for “Computer-center KEY” (Saint-Petersburg) prize in “Computer technologies in electronics and automatics” nomination.