An Intelligent Control Architecture for the Microwave Fabrication of Composite Materials Based on the Generic Task Approach to Knowledge-Based Systems

Contents

An architecture for intelligent real-time control is presented. The architecture is rooted in the Generic Task (GT) approach to knowledgebased systems and incorporates plan generation and real-time plan execution-monitoring components. The plan generation component produces a plan representation which typically contains a large collection of possible paths from initial to desired process states. Selection of the precise path taken through the plan is determined by the execution-monitoring component. The execution-monitoring component incrementally determines appropriate partial paths through the plan based on sensory input gathered from real-time process monitoring. This real-time selection of appropriate partial paths is facilitated through the use of a sponsor- selector mechanism. The usefulness of the approach is demonstrated by applying the control architecture to the control of a microwavebased composite material fabricator.