Hierarchical Online Control Design for Autonomous Resource Management in Advanced Life Support Systems

This paper presents a distributed, hierarchical control scheme for autonomous resource management in complex embedded systems that can handle dynamic changes in resource constraints and operational requirements. The developed hierarchical control structure handles the interactions between subsystem and system-level controllers. A global coordinator at the root of the hierarchy ensures resource requirements for the duration of the mission are not violated. We have applied this approach to design a three-tier hierarchical controller for the operation of a lunar habitat that includes a number of interacting life support components.