DESpot is a new discrete-event system (DES) software research tool. It supports both flat projects (collection of plant and supervisor DES), and Hierarchical Interface-Based Supervisory Control (HISC) projects.

Help Browser

DESpot comes with a detailed help browser. The help pages can also be viewed here. You will find a detailed description of the features offered by DESpot, instructions on how to use DESpot, as well as many screenshots. You can download DESpot's user manual (same material as above link) in PDF form here

DESpot Features

• Supports flat DES projects and HISC projects, including low data events. For more information on HISC, see the publication list below.

• DESpot has a graphical DES editor, including export to postscript and PNG graphic formats.

• DESpot can verify the three main HISC properties individually, or as a group using the "Check Project" menu item. Check project runs each property check in a separate thread, so if you have a quad-core CPU, you could see around a 3x speedup.

• DESpot now includes the bddHISC algorithms. bddHISC can verify an HISC project, or do HISC synthesis using binary-decision diagram (BDD) based algorithms capable of handling individual components at least as large as 10^15 states.

• DESpot allows the entry of timed DES (TDES) projects for use with sampled-data supervisory control (see publication list below). DESpot can output to the bddSD file format. bddSD uses BDD algorithms to verify sampled-data supervisory control properties. Work is under way to incorporate the bddSD algorithms into DESpot.

• DESpot has a built in DES simulator that includes graphical simulation of the DES. DESpot can also use the HISC structure to accelerate the simulation.

• The DESpot DES and project files are XML, so they can be edited using a text editor, if needed.

• DESpot is open source software, released under the GNU General Public license (GPL), version 2. See below for more information.

Download Information

You can download a copy of DESpot here.

If you make use of DESpot, please send an e-mail to (leduc@mcmaster.ca) stating so, and providing the name of the organization you work for. We would simply like to get an idea of how useful people are finding DESpot.

DESpot Contributors

For a list of contributors to DESpot, see here.

DESpot Project Editor

To the left is an image of a DESpot HISC project editor. For more screenshots, see the online help files for DESpot here.

Publications Relevant to DESpot:

Copyright:

The software available from this page has been release under the GNU General Public license (GPL), version 2. For specific details of the terms of the GPL, please read the license here. For more information on the GPL, please see the Free Software Foundation.

The general idea is that the GPL allows you to take a copy of the software and pretty much do what you want with it. You are also given access to the source code. You are free to use the source code to make a new program, but the new program must also be released under the GPL. You can include parts or all of the program in your own program, as long as you distribute your program under the GPL or a compatible license.

You could also choose to add functionality to the program, to suit your own needs.

The programs on this page are distributed in the hope that they will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.