On Hybrid Petri Nets

Petri nets (PNs) are widely used to model discrete event dynamic systems (computer systems, manufacturing systems, communication systems, etc). Continuous Petri nets (in which the markings are real numbers and the transition firings are continuous) were defined more recently; such a PN may model a continuous system or approximate a discrete system. A hybrid Petri net can be obtained if one part is discrete and another part is continuous. This paper is basically a survey of the work of the authors’ team on hybrid PNs (definition, properties, modeling). In addition, it contains new material such as the definition of extended hybrid PNs and several applications, explanations and comments about the timings in Petri nets, more on the conflict resolution in hybrid PNs, and connection between hybrid PNs and hybrid automata. The paper is illustrated by many examples.