BBIPS: a blackboard-based integrated process supervision

As the controlled plant becomes more complex and dynamic, it usually requires more than one control technique to control the plant effectively. A blackboard framework allows different knowledge sources to corporate together to provide an opportunistic problem solving process than any one of the knowledge sources (e.g. fuzzy rule-base control. PID control. MRAC, etc.) can achieve alone. However. there is a general lack of structure in its domain knowledge sources. which often produces a complex control strategy. The integrated process supervision (IPS) framework divides the control regimes into three generic control grouping and uses a supervisory module to select the appropriate control regime to be activated according to the system performance. The IPS further emphasizes on the importance of having a good supervisory module. BBIPS integrates the blackboard and IPS frameworks and attempts to combine their respective merits. BBIPS is able to incorporate multiple and different control techniques within a common framework under the control of a supervisory module. In addition. it provides a hierarchically structured architecture that is both generic and modular in nature. which allows simple and easy addition of new knowledge sources. Extensive experimentations have been conducted using a three tanks flow system as a test-bed. This paper provides a detailed description of the architecture and the analysis of the empirical result. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.