Plug-and-play reconfiguration of locally interconnected systems with limited model information

This paper proposes a novel method for reconfiguration of decentralised controllers after actuator failures in a locally interconnected system. If an actuator fails in a subsystem, only the corresponding control station should be reconfigured, although the fault has effects on other subsystems through the physical couplings. Therefore, design agents are introduced which store the model of the subsystem they are assigned to. Based on this local information, the design agent of the faulty subsystem procures relevant model information from other design agents to model the faulty subsystem under the influence of the physical interactions and to reconfigure the corresponding control station. The paper presents conditions to approximate the behaviour of the physically coupled faulty subsystem in order to limit the amount of model information for the design of a virtual actuator. As a consequence, the design agents have to “play” together to gather the model of the faulty subsystem before the reconfigured control station is “plugged-in” the control hardware. Plug-and-play reconfiguration is illustrated on an electric power network.