Relative coobservability for decentralised supervisory control of discrete-event systems

In this paper, we study the concept of relative coobservability in decentralised supervisory control of discrete-event systems under partial observation. This extends our previous work on relative observability from a centralised setup to a decentralised one. A fundamental concept in decentralised supervisory control is coobservability (and its several variations); this property is not, however, closed under set union, and hence there generally does not exist the supremal element. Our proposed relative coobservability, although stronger than coobservability, is algebraically well behaved, and the supremal relatively coobservable sublanguage of a given language exists. We present a language-based algorithm to compute this supremal sublanguage; the algorithm allows straightforward implementation using off-the-shelf algorithms. Moreover, relative coobservability is weaker than conormality, which is also closed under set union; unlike conormality, relative coobservability imposes no constraint on disabling unobservable controllable events.