ABSTRACT: This paper concerns the reconfiguration task in case of sensor and actuator failures that make the operation of the nominal control loop impossible. For these failures the adjustment of the controller to the faulty plant includes the selection of alternative sensors or actuators in order to close the control loop which has been brought out of operation by the failures.

 

The paper develops the idea of a virtual sensor and a virtual actuator, which adapts both the control configuration and the controller parameters to the faulty plant. These virtual blocks are dynamical system, which are put between the faulty plant and the nominal controller. They should ``hide'' the effects of the sensor or actuator failures from the controller. That is, the reconfigured plant, which consists of the faulty plant and the virtual sensor or virtual actuator, should behave like the nominal plant (fault-hiding goal). Design methods for the virtual sensor and the virtual actuator and experimental results are presented.

BIOBRAPHY: Jan Lunze is Professor of Automatic Control and head of the Institute of Automation and Computer Control at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, where he teaches system and control theory. His research interests are in fault-tolerant control, in hybrid dynamical systems, and in networked control systems, where he currently is the coordinator of a priority program of the German Science Foundation. He is author and co-author of numerous research papers and of several books including Diagnosis and Fault-Tolerant Control (Springer 2006, 2nd edition).