Hyper-automaton: a Model of Control Algorithms

The hyper-automaton is introduced as a model of complex control algorithms. The model reflects basic aspects of control algorithms: presence of an external environment, cyclic and event-driven functioning, synchronism, hierarchical structure and logical parallelism. The paper introduces basic definitions and conceptual means of hyper-automaton model, which encourage program implementation of the algorithms. A new kind of functional polymorphism we name event- driven polymorphism is distinguished and discussed.