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

Integrated ship system control is a challenging domain as it involves a set of highly complex and interdependent systems, including electrical power, electric drive propulsion, high-energy weapon systems, various auxiliary systems, and an underlying communications network. Many of the high-level system management questions demanding answers for the electric ship power system and ship service are directly related to control system architecture. As we move toward more decentralized, hierarchical systems, much work remains to be done to optimally determine the appropriate level of control and intelligence at each tier of the architecture. The body of knowledge in this area is limited with respect to power systems and is only slightly more developed for ship service systems. There is a significant need not only to address methods and algorithms from the standpoint of pure decentralization but also to address ways to migrate these methods into an actual distributed, fault-tolerant supervisory control structure that meets the requirements for implementation on the electric ship.