A Control System Test Bed for Demonstration of Distributed Computational Intelligence Applied to Reconfiguring Heterogeneous Systems

This paper presents a combined hardware/software simulation framework for testing and evaluating decentralized control methodologies for integrated mechanical and electrical systems on board US Navy ships. Integrated ship system control is a challenging domain as it involves a set of highly complex and inter-dependent systems, including electrical power, HVAC, and an underlying communications network. This control problem is especially difficult when damage events or current operational objectives require collaboration between the individual systems to make intelligent tradeoffs that maximize overall effectiveness.