Partial-Order Reduction for Supervisory Controller Synthesis

A key challenge in the synthesis and subsequent analysis of supervisory controllers is the impact of state-space explosion caused by concurrency. The main bottleneck is often the memory needed to store the composition of plant and requirement automata and the resulting supervisor. Partial-order reduction (POR) is a well-established technique...

Scenarios in the design of flexible manufacturing systems

Supervisor synthesis and throughput optimization of partially-controllable manufacturing systems

One of the challenges in the design of supervisors with optimal throughput for manufacturing systems is the presence of behavior outside the control of the supervisor. Uncontrollable behavior is typically encountered in the presence of (user) inputs, external disturbances, and exceptional behavior. This paper introduces an approach for the...

Change detection support for supervisory controllers of highly automated systems: Effects on performance, mental workload, and recovery of situation awareness following interruptions

Dynamic Positioning (DP) is a computer-controlled process to automatically keep a floating vessel at a specific position or to follow a pre-defined path (tracking) by using its own propellers and thrusters. The human supervisory controller has no direct need to constantly know what the status is of all parts of the automation and the system it...

Development and demonstration of a live data streaming capability using an underwater acoustic communication link

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) offer an automated solution for the collection of environmental data underwater. While they provide an effective solution in scenarios where their task is limited to basic sensor data collection, supervisory control by an operator is still needed to make more complicated decisions. Because raw data of camera...

Supervisory control of a heavy-duty diesel engine with an electrified waste heat recovery system

This paper presents an integrated energy and emission management strategy, called Integrated Power- train Control(IPC), for an Euro-VI diesel engine with an electrified waste heat recovery system. This strategy optimizes the CO – NOx 2 trade-off by minimizing the operational costs associated with fuel consumption, AdBlue dosage,and active...

Cyber (In-)security of Industrial Control Systems: A Societal Challenge

Our society and its citizens increasingly depend on the undisturbed functioning of critical infrastructures (CI), their products and services. Many of the CI services as well as other organizations use Industrial Control Systems (ICS) to monitor and control their mission-critical processes. Therefore, it is crucial that the functioning of ICS is...

Integrated energy and emission management for heavy-duty diesel engines with waste heat recovery system

This study presents an integrated energy and emission management strategy for an Euro-VI diesel engine with Waste Heat Recovery (WHR) system. This Integrated Powertrain Control (IPC) strategy optimizes the CO2-NOx trade-off by minimizing the operational costs associated with fuel and AdBlue consumption. The main contribution of this work is that...

Measuring cognitive task load on a naval ship: Implications of a real world environment

Application of more and more automation in process control shifts the operator’s task from manual to supervisory control. Increasing system autonomy, complexity and information fluctuations make it extremely difficult to develop static support concepts that cover all critical situations after implementing the system. Therefore, support systems...

Atomos IV: Enabling integrated decision support in the supervisory control of ships

TNO participated during eight years in a European Consortium ATOMOS IV (Advanced Technology ro Optimise Marine Operational Safety - Intelligent Vessels), performing research in the human-centred development of decision support systems for ship control centers. New concepts were developed and tested, and installed on board ofa real vessel. The...

Supervising UAVs: Improving operator performance by optimizing the human factor

Tele-operated unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have no operators on board and therefore enable extension of the present sensing and communication capabilities in civil and military missions, without unnecessarily endangering personnel or deploying expensive material. One should also realize that tele-operation from a control centre may result in...

Fault management in supervisory control: The effect of false alarms and support

Automation has changed the role of human operators from direct manual control to supervision. Their main task is to monitor whether system performance remains within pre-specified ranges and intervention is only required in unusual situations. One of the consequences is a loss of situation awareness, which significantly affects performance in...