A formal design methodology for land-transport operations

We propose a supervisory control approach, based on controlled automata concepts, to the planning for online service-operations control of a class of passenger land-transport systems (PLanTSs). The PLanTS belongs to a class of dynamic demand-responsive transportation systems. We first provide an overview of service-operations in PLanTS and present a formal design methodology for service-operations control as the synthesis of a modular supervisory controller. The supervisory design methodology is then illustrated via a simplified but realistic PLanTS. All automaton models for the PLanTS are provided, but only the design of the modular supervisor to ensure proper start-up and shutdown of vehicle-fleet operations is given.