Intelligent Control & Autonomous Systems
Enabling adaptive, reconfigurable, and reliable systems through model-based approaches

Embedded systems are becoming more complex in response to increasing customer demands, such as reconfigurability, sensing and self-adjustment, and zero downtime.

It is difficult and impractical to anticipate every possible contingency when designing such systems. Instead what’s needed are systems that:
-	can adapt to changing requirements and environment conditions;
-	are simple to design and use;
-	and yet are still able to provide superior functionality and robustness.

PARC Solution

PARC researchers are addressing these needs and enabling new functionality by applying model-based approaches to system design, control, and diagnosis.

The system designer or operator provides only the desired outcome, and the intelligent model-based system reasons on its own – about its capabilities, current condition, and any changes in its environment – to find the optimal behavior and successfully accomplish its task. This approach enables:

• higher reliability through automatic exception handling;
• more complex functionality such as redundant lines; and
• more flexibility by allowing customers to upgrade, downgrade, or otherwise reconfigure the system – without needing additional programming by the system designer.

Examples

Examples of PARC’s work in intelligent control and autonomous systems include:

• Intelligent digital printing press – PARC designed the control software for a family of Xerox printing systems, including the flagship iGen3™ digital production printing system. PARC researchers developed constraint-based models of the system components and a generic reasoning engine to let the printing system intelligently configure itself, coordinate components, and achieve the job objectives specified by the operator. The component models are reusable for different machine configurations and for different tasks such as fault recovery. [see example case ]
   
• Adaptive energy systems – PARC is developing advanced energy systems that are self-optimizing in response to environmental conditions and performance objectives. [more about PARC's cleantech work]