Designing Scalable Finite State Machines
A Finite State Machine (FSM) is an abstract computational module used to represent a system that can be in exactly one of a finite number of states at any given time. An FSM can transition from one state to another on a given input, and it can perform an action during the transition.
In control theory, there is a classification of Moore and Mealy machines. Moore’s FSM output depends only on a state, that is, the FSM uses only entry actions. Mealy’s FSM output depends on the input and current state, that is, the action it performs is determined by both the current state and the input.
The FSMs that we will cover in this chapter are a combination of both Moore and Mealy FSMs as they support both actions performed during transitions and entry and exit actions that depend only on a current state. FSMs are also called Unified Modeling Language (UML) state machines and are used in real-life applications in embedded systems to...
