A holistic approach to intelligent automated control

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.