Control Reconfiguration: Survey of Methods and Open Problems

This report surveys recent results and approaches from the field of control reconfiguration within a general fault-tolerant control framework. Open problems for future research are identified. Control reconfiguration is embedded within a wider fault-tolerant control context and set apart from other approaches to achieve fault tolerance. It is explained why simpler approaches than control reconfiguration are not sufficient to cover most practically relevant cases. Applications of faulttolerant control to real-world problems are discussed. Notions that consider reconfigurability as a system property provide valuable means to assess the chances of finding recovery actions. For this reason, recent notions allowing such analysis are reviewed separately from specific reconfiguration techniques, which possess their own sets of solvability conditions. Existing relevant approaches to fault-tolerant control by means of control reconfiguration are reviewed. The discussion includes an assessment of each method’s strengths and weaknesses. An overview over ongoing research activities in the area of control reconfiguration concludes the review. Subsequently, open research problems that are both theoretically and experimentally motivated are developed. The emphasis is on the development of reconfiguration approaches for new system classes with a focus on switched linear and discrete-event systems. The report concludes with the presentation of a far-term vision of integrated plant restructuring and control reconfiguration.