Towards a semantically enhanced control architecture

The design of feedback control systems typically assumes a fixed number of sensors and actuators. However, in today's large-scale complex systems there is often a need to replace faulty sensors/actuators with new ones or to deploy additional sensors of possibly different characteristics compared to the old sensors. In such cases, it may be necessary to deactivate, redesign and reconfigure the feedback control system, which implies system interruptions and significant economic costs. This paper provides a first step towards a semantically enhanced feedback control architecture, where it is possible to automatically reconfigure the sensor/actuator components without having to redesign the feedback control law. The proposed architecture uses ontology-based semantic mediation. This paper focuses on the sensor case and utilizes a simple example to illustrate the approach. It is emphasized that the proposed architecture will be even more beneficial for achieving interoperability in the new paradigm of system of systems where systems may be added or removed and the expectation is that the overall system should continue to operate optimally.