Petri nets are a quite general model of concurrency that has also found use in many places in computer science. They are used in model checking, and also as the foundation for giving a semantics to BPMN, for example.
I think it's not unreasonable to consider Petri nets as a generalization of automata (finite or infinite) with concurrency. Just like automata, they find applications in many places depending on how you further extend or restrict them.
I think it's not unreasonable to consider Petri nets as a generalization of automata (finite or infinite) with concurrency. Just like automata, they find applications in many places depending on how you further extend or restrict them.