Fairmount Automation, Johns Hopkins University, and The Naval Surface Warfare Center Demonstrate Advanced Ship-wide Automation System Architecture

PHOENIXVILLE, PA-October 25, 2001-Fairmount Automation, Inc. along with Johns Hopkins University - Applied Physics Lab (JHU-APL) and The Naval Surface Warfare Center - Ship Systems Engineering Station (NSWCCD-SSES) demonstrated the results of the Open Autonomy Kernel (OAK) Project to the Office of Naval Research (ONR) at the Chilled Water Reduced Scale Advanced Demonstrator (CW-RSAD) in Philadelphia.

In the past few years, the Navy has evaluated several core technologies in the areas of component-level intelligent distributed control systems (CLIDCS) and higher-level, advanced reasoning systems that will serve as the foundation for future ship-wide automation systems. The Navy's vision is of a hierarchical automation system comprised of a higher-level, advanced reasoning layer atop a survivable, device-level control system. The tasks that are typically relegated to the device-level layer include those requiring a rapid, local response such as closed-loop process control or piping rupture detection and isolation. The advanced reasoning layer, or high-level control system, is responsible for issuing high-level commands or goals to the device-layer to ensure that systems are aligned and operated to achieve the highest possible level of readiness to meet the ship's mission. An example of this high-level response may be the autonomous decision to shed certain shipboard loads that may exhibit a lower priority in relation to the overall ship mission when total demand for system resources exceeds the supply.

The OAK project represents the initial fusion and successful demonstration of this advanced control architecture, and associated technologies, on the Chilled Water Reduced-Scale Advanced Demonstrator (CW-RSAD) at NSWCCD-SSES, Philadelphia. The system implemented on the CW-RSAD assumes a hierarchical control architecture consisting of an intelligent, survivable component-level automation system that is supervised by a high-level control system that uses model-based reasoning to diagnose fluid system failures, and coordinate and reconfigure the fluid system through the device-level control system. The device-level control system was designed and implemented by NSWC and Fairmount Automation, Inc., and employs LonWorks distributed control-networking technology. The high-level control system, called the Open Autonomy Kernel (OAK) and developed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU-APL), incorporates autonomous, collaborative agents that communicate using a robust, portable inter-agent communication architecture, and a model-based reasoning engine to identify the modes of components, subsystems, and the system as a whole. This high-level advanced reasoning system also uses graph-based abbreviated discrete event models to generate reconfiguration actions.

The OAK team successfully demonstrated the ability of this advanced control system architecture to autonomously identify isolated, sequential and concurrent component failures, and reconfigure the CW-RSAD components to satisfy the overall mission objectives. "These types of advanced control architectures will be instrumental in reducing the manning required to operate the complex array of interdependent machinery systems that will be found on future U.S. Navy surface combatants," said Brian Callahan, Vice President of Engineering Services at Fairmount Automation.

About Fairmount Automation, Inc. 

Fairmount Automation designs, manufactures, and sells rugged process control and automation products for use in harsh environments. The company also operates an engineering services division that is sponsored by the US Navy to investigate cutting edge distributed control technologies. The company's flagship product, the FAC-2000, is a fully programmable controller that is used to monitor and regulate industrial machinery such as boilers, pumps, distillers, heat exchangers, aircraft carrier catapults, and waste transfer systems. Since 1997, the company has been a leading supplier of rugged control equipment to the Navy, where our products are controlling mission-critical processes on more than 25% of the surface fleet. Our unique combination of hardware, software and services enables us to offer a compelling solution to our customers. Our mission is to become the leading provider of survivable process control and automation products for harsh environments through the continued development of innovative and technologically advanced products specifically packaged to serve those environments. We aim to be the dominant automation original equipment manufacturer (OEM) for military applications and to consistently gain market share in the worldwide industrial controls market. The company is based in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. For more information, please visit our website at www.FairmountAutomation.com or contact us at info@FairmountAutomation.com or (610) 935-8656.