A Methodology for Integration in Intelligent Control Systems

Abstract

At present, most of the distributed control systems present a hierarchical and multilayered structure where the basic control close to the process is placed in the bottom and the intelligent control, nowadays performed by a human team, is located on the top. Our approach proposes a methodology to formalize the activities carried out by the control and production team of an industrial plant by means of a basic task. This atomic task has been found to remain constant through all layers of the hierarchical control structure. We put forward the fact that the three main steps in knowledge-based systems development can be carried out by means of the same set of concepts. The paper is divided into three different parts. The first one presents a theoretical overview from the cognitive science point of view discussing the main ideas of the theoretical foundations of this HPM (HINT project methodology) proposal. The second part expounds the conceptual framework that represents the main part of the proposed approach describing the main concepts, the pyramidal structure, and the intelligent layers within the proposed control hierarchy where our approach is focused. Finally, the blackboard architecture is proposed as the most suitable one to implement the concepts previously outlined.