Petri Net Controlled Finite Automata

We present a generalization of finite automata using Petri nets as control, called Concurrent Finite Automata for short. Several modes of acceptance, defined by final markings of the Petri net, are introduced, and their equivalence is shown. The class of languages obtained by *-free concurrent finite automata contains both the class of regular sets and the class of Petri net languages defined by final marking, and is contained in the class of context-sensitive languages