A Dynamically Reconfigurable Software Control Architecture for Advanced Life Support

This paper describes the design of an intelligent control software architecture for advanced life support (ALS) applications that is dynamically reconfigurable. Such an architecture will dramatically decrease the downtime of ALS systems due to subcomponent failure and will improve safety and operational efficiency by supporting reconfiguration of the control system with a minimum of deactivation or shutdown of the systems being controlled. In addition to increasing system reliability and safety in deployed ALS systems, this architecture will also support ALS technology advancement by allowing the rapid integration of newly developed sensors, actuators and/or control algorithms for evaluation or comparison purposes in ALS ground test beds. Detailed discussion is given for the motivation as well as the design of both the architecture and experiments to validate the architecture’s improvement over current designs.