A holistic approach to intelligent automated control

Abstract

Our belief is that industrial problems require holistic solutions if AI based control is to become an everyday reality. We have designed and implemented a software architecture which supports heterogenous AI subsystems and which is now controlling a working plant. The support architecture is associated with (1) a design methodology and (2) an underlying conceptual model of an integrated system. In the latter, a reactive system is seen as consisting of layers consisting of interacting elements called 'basic control tasks'. Designing a control system to this model requires the analyst to consider the plant, its environment and it components as a whole.