Shipboard system diagnostics & reconfiguration using model-based autonomous cooperative agents

The ability to reconfigure a ship's engineering plant in response to changing mission or equipment conditions can dramatically increase a ship's capability and survivability. We present a distributed control architecture for integrating multiple ship systems and providing resource- and diagnostic-driven reconfiguration at multiple system levels, such as mission-level, process-level and component-level. This architecture is being developed under a cooperative program between Rockwell and the U.S. Office of Naval Research. The architecture is based on the use of software agents distributed among networked automation controllers, which together autonomously cooperate to control and reconfigure the ship's systems. System- and sub-system models are embedded in the software agents to provide diagnostics and assist in system reconfiguration when problems are detected. We also discuss the application of this architecture to a chilled water system being used as the demonstration test bed. Copyright (C) 2001 IFAC.