Enabling the on-line intrinsic evolution of analog controllers

The intrinsic evolution of analog controllers to provide closed-loop control of the speed of a DC motor has been previously demonstrated at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. A side effect of the evolutionary process is that during evolution there are necessarily poor configurations to be evaluated that could cause damage to the plant. This paper concerns the development and implementation of a safe evolvable analog controller (EAC) architecture able to evolve controllers on-line even in the presence of these poor configurations. The EAC concept is discussed and experimental results are presented that show the feasibility of the approach. This EAC architecture represents the first in a series of steps required to make deployment of an evolvable controller a reality.