An Autonomous Distributed Control System for Naval Platforms

The success of the missions of naval ships depends highly on the availability of sensor, weapon, and command systems. These systems depend on support systems such as chilled water systems and electrical power systems. Disturbances caused by technical problems or battle damage may result in deterioration or failure of the support systems. Therefore, the support systems need to remain operational despite defective system components and connections. This means that (1) redundant system components and connections need to be incorporated into the design, and that (2) a mechanism should be available to restore the functions by activating another system configuration. To meet the first requirement a design methodology has been developed to determine the right amount of redundancy. A set of generic design guidelines is drafted. To meet the second requirement an agent-oriented platform management concept has been developed. The distribution of the agents throughout the ship and their specific interaction enables the realization of highly survivable systems. To demonstrate the concept, a small-scale hardware demonstrator has been built representing the chilled water system of a naval ship. The general concept of this new approach and the results of the validation with the hardware demonstrator are highlighted in this article