COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN PROCESS CONTROL

R.Sanz*, R.Galin*, A.JimCnez* F.Matia*, J.RVelasco** and G.Marhnez***

*Dept. de Automitica, Ingenieria Electr6nica e Informitica Industrial **Dept. de Ingenieria de Sistemas Telematicos
Universidad Polit6cnica de Madrid. SPA IN

***Dept. AutomAtica, Electr6nica e Ingenieria de Sistemas

Universidad Priblica de Navarra, SPA IN

e-mail:

sanz@disam.upm.es

Abstract: The issues raised in advanced process control applications lead control engineers to be aware of the need of integrating advanced information processing (IP) capabilities, in special artificial intelligence (AI) ones, in the process control loop. This is intrinsically a very complex task due to inherent process complexity and AI software heterogeneity.

From our point of view, the control of a complex process can be decomposed in a series of IP tasks that require quite different processing capabilities. These capabilities are provided by a set of heterogeneous software chunks -software technology instantiations- that should be integrated to obtain the required global functionality. The design of the final system must be the result of the process of matching the set of process control tasks with the set of technologies in a tightly constrained environment. In the past years, the Intelligent Control Group at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid has been developing architectures and applicationsfor complex process control based on artificial intelligencetechnologies. We present some results obtained and comments about the work under development. The most active issues in these days are the specification of an intelligent control system design methadology based on a task-technology map and the integration of specific technologies to obtain synergistic effects; we are specially studying the application and integration of the technologies addressed in this congress: fuzzy control and validation, neurocontrol, neuromodelling and genetic algorithms for optimization and control adaptation.
Keywords: Process control, artificial intelligence, intelligent process control, fuzzy control, sensor validation, genetic algorithm based optimization, neural modeling, neural control, integration.

INTRODUCTION: INTELLIGENT PROCESS CONTROL

In the area of complex process control there are sometimes cases when the conventional control technologies can not cope with the problems that appear in such systems. There have been much literature and research effort about advanced control, but there isn't any solution at all because the control problems are quite heterogeneous and ill defined. The issues raised in advanced process control applications lead control engineers to be aware of the need of integrating advanced information processing (IP) capabilities, specially artificial intelligence (AI) ones, in the process control loop. This is intrinsically a very complex task due to inherent process complexity and AI software heterogeneity [Sanz 901. In that sense, the control of a complex process can be decomposed in a series of IP tasks that require quite different processing capabilities. These capabilities are provided by a set of heterogeneous software chunks
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-software technology instantiations- that should be integrated to obtain the required global functionality. The design of the final system must be the result of the process of matching the set of process control tasks with the set of technologies in a tightly constrained environment. In the past years, personnel from the Universidad Polittcnica de Madrid have been developing architectures and applications for complex process control based on artificial intelligence technologies. We present in this paper some of the results obtained and comments about the work under development. The most active issues in these days are the specification of an intelligent control system design methodology based on a task-technology map and the integration of specific technologies to obtain synergistic effects; we are specially studying the application and integration of the technologies addressed in this congress: fuzzy control and validation, neurocontrol, neuromodelling and genetic algorithms for optimization and control adaptation.

INTELLIGENT CONTROL DEVELOPMENTS

During the past years a research effort has been done in the Universidad Politbcnica de Madrid to apply AI to process control [Jimtnez 931. This effort has produced several working systems oriented towards different process control applications. The development of such systems has been done in cooperation with the industry and other R&D centers and software development firms. These systems are the following:
SECOFE: An expert system for operator assistance in an eritromicyn production plant. MARTIC: A model assited expert system coupled with a plant simulator to perform on-line monitorization, optimization and operator assistance in a potassium sulphate plantjMadnez 931. CONEX: A distributed AI application for intelligent control of a cement kiln. The application includes data validation, fuzzy control, conventional control, expert systems, model based simulation and reasoning and advanced operator interfaces [Sanz 901. OTRO: A system for on-line optimization of production in a fossil power plant [Velasco 91bI.

ALGORITHMS
CONEX

GENETlC

Figure 1: Heritage and technology application in intelligent control systems.

By now, we are working in some other systems and in a special project to develop a methodology for building intelligent control systems that resume our experiences in the area. These open projects are:
MZCS: A blackboard based successor of CONEX.It includes new cooperation control, neurocontrol and

other minor issues.

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Integration of Heterogenous AI, E x p e r t Systems, Fuzzy Data Validation, Dcep

Table I Intelligent control projects.

HINT:A blackboard based architecture and methodology for integrating heterogeneous AI applications
for process monitorization and control. It uses fuzzy validation, expert systems, neuromodelling and model based reasoning. This project is and international effort, financed by the Commission of the European Community [Aguilar 931. M I X : A control system based on hybridation of GA, NN and Symbolic reasoning. M I T A : A resume effort in which we will try to develop a methodology for building intelligent process control systems based on heterogeneous AI technologies.

In the table I the main issues in each system are highlighted, and the application area and due date of the system
are included.

In the Figure 1 we can see the heritage between systems and the kind of technologies that have been included or are under development (that is the case of MIX and MITA).

FUZZY TECHNOLOGIES
Nowadays we are applying fuzzy logic to solve two kinds of problems: control and data validation. Fuzzy control is related with CONEX,MICS and MITA systems, while data validation is related with the HINT one. The lack of optimal results obtained with classic control in continuous processes, in which the variables values and the expert knowledge are usually imprecise, motivated the use of fuzzy control. The direct control level of the CONEX system includes fuzzy, PID and feedback state control simultaneously [Matia 92aI.

In the MICS system, we are developing a design tool to help, not only in the edition of knowledge, but in the design aspects of a fuzzy controller.

MITA will try to go beyond in the development of an analysis tool, completing the previous one. The idea is
to analyze the dynamic behavior of fuzzy controllers and fuzzy systems, and to help in the improvement of their performance. In the other hand, the HINT system is proving that fuzzy technologies are adequate to cope with data validation

problems [Aguilar 931. Human expert knowledge is usually expressed by means of linguistic terms, and so with imprecision and uncertainty: sensors with very low reliability, measures that seem to be wrong, measures that usually fluctuate a lot, etc. And fuzzy logic allows to manage last linguistic expressions as very low, wrong, a lot, etc. The HINT system provides the mechanisms to carry out data validation, finding out a confidence value between 0 and 1 for each variable.

GENETIC ALGORITHMS APPLICATIONS

Expert systems (or fuzzy systems) may be good tools to make intelligent control systems. But if we are working over complex processes, the knowledge will not be static but dynamic. Better actions to reach any situation may change along time because the system may change too. This is the main reason to use any machine learning method to generate new information to replace bad one in the knowledge base. An architecture to insert machine learning in proces control systems has been described in [Velasco 91bI. Genetic Algorithms (GA) give us an efficient search method in a complex space like syntax of expert rules is. They use natural selection to make evolve the knowledge in the knowledge base. Natural selection is used because from an initial population of rules, the algorithm selects the pick of them (the best rule's group based on a strength measure) to create new ones. These new rules are made by mixing parents genetic information (their premises and assertion), and they replace the worse group of knowledge (with very low strength). From time to time, a random mutation affects to children, in order to let us to be sure that we are going to explore, sooner or later, all system states. Some references of GA applied to process control are [Magdalena 921 and [Velasco 91aI. Of course, rule's strength must be adapted, growing it for good rules and decreasing it for bad ones. Several algorithms may be used to adapt this strength. At the Universidad Polittcnica de Madrid we have developed an algorithm which take into account the status of the process at this moment (good or bad in relation to the main objective of the control system) and the rules that have suggested some actions to reach that status [Velasco 91al. Both of mechanisms (adaptive -modifying the strength- and genetic -generating new rules-) allow to the rule-based system to look for a good set of rules for the process control system. Of course, rules that expert system uses may be based on classic, fuzzy or any other kind of logic [Rodriguez 931.

NEURAL COMPUTING
Research in Neural Computing is oriented to get: Dynamical nets to identify and control industrial processes. Fuzzy Cognitive Maps nets to leam automatically causal effects of the industrial processes and to use this knowledge to the control system. In the first objective, we have developed a quadratic network based in the paradigm of perceptron multileyer, which incorporate, to the backpropagation learning algorithm, as inputs the products of inputs variables. This kind of net in combination with delays is more adapted of the necessities of control. We used quadratic nets to identify cements mills and kilns. The second idea, is a research to study the possibility of obtain knowledge from the process that is not knew for the expert in the process. Mainly, causal effects and how is possible to represent and to use this knowledge in control problems. The FCM Kosko paradigm will be use in the first tries.

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INTEGRATION
'The integration issue has a raising importance in the use of these technologies. It seems evident that only trough the use of integrated AI can these applications be useful, because the problems posed to the intelligent control system are so heterogeneous that only with specialized technologies the control systems can perform as required. 'This consideration is first proposed i n [Sanz 901 and lead us to the design and development of the CONEX :system, and the successor and more ambitious HINT project. ]Relatedwith this issue of integration, is the formalization of process knowledge in order to be shared. This issue appears in HINT and the solution developed is an off-line common representation language that is capable of representing objects to be shared. However this representation schema lacks a methodological support, and so, irhe models developed with it have a very low level of abstraction. 'The main objective of the MITA project is the development of such a methodology. This methodology will be used to analyze plant knowledge and build a multiresolutional model of the plant, encompassing structural and activity knowledge about the plant.

CONCLUSIONS
'The efforts done in the development of the above mentioned projects have provided us with a background 'knowledge that will be used in further developments. By now we have some clear ideas about the way that the ,technologies mentioned -in particular the target technologies of this congress- should be enhanced and used. 'The research community has done a lot of work to obtain the maximum performance from these technologies, but from the point of view of their use a stress must be done in the cooperative use of them. The cooperation $canbe done using low level coupling -as is the case of most of the mentioned systems but it can also be done using high level representations and advanced integration schemata. The technology of objects seems to be the way to obtain these high level representations. Stress must be done on the optimization of algorithms, because real problems are real-time problems, as well as on enhancing the reliability of these AI based applications.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to acknowledge the support and confidence of some organizations -public and private-that have financed our work ASLAND S.A., CICYT, CDTI, UITESA, TERBESA and EC.

REFERENCES
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[Martinez 931 Expert System Interfacing with Distributed Control Systems. G.Martinez, A.JimCnez, R.Sanz y R.GalAn. 1993 Intemational Fuzzy Systems and Intelligent Control Conference, Louisville, Kentucky, USA, Mach 14-17 1993. [Matia 92al Medium Level Control of Processes: An Approach to the CONEX Direct Control. F.Matia, R.Sanz, A. Jimdnez, R.Galh. Proc of the IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Components and Instruments f o r Control Applications, SICICA 92, Malaga, Spain, May 20-22, 1992. [Matia 92bl Medidas de Bondad para Sistemas de Control Borroso. F.Matia, A.JimBnez, R.Sanz y R.Galdn. 11 Congreso Espaiiol sobre Tecnologfasy Ldgica Fuzzy. Boadilla del Monte, Madrid, Spain, November 2-4, 1992. [Matia 92cI Fuzzy Controllers: Lifting the Linear-Nonlinear Frontier. F.Matia, A.JimCnez, R.GalAn y R.Sanz. Fuzzy Sets and Systems 52 (2) (1992) 113-128. [Matia 93al Fuzziness Measures for Fuzzy Control Systems: An Introduction. F.Matia, A.JimCnez, R.Sanz, R.Galh y G.Martinez. FUZZ-IEEEP3, Second IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems. San Diego (California). March 28-April 1, 1993. [Matia 93b] Fuzzy Adaptive Control Environment Using Lyapunov Functions FACE. F.Matia, A.JimCnez, R.Sanz y R.Gal6n. V IFSA World Congress, Seoul, Korea, 4-9 July 1993. [Monasteno 911 Sistema de Optimizaci6n. Informe final. Proyecto OTRO. F-Monasterio, L.Magdalena, J.R.Velasco, D.PBrez, A.Rodriguez and J.Lbpez. I n f o n e T&cnico UPM/DIT/LIA 9/91. Laboratorio de Inteligencia Artificial, Departamento de Ingenieria de Sistema TelemAticos, UPM, Madrid, Spain 1.991. [Oliveira 901 An Architecture for the Supervision of Fuzzy Controllers. P.J.Oliveira, P.U.Lima, J.J.Sentieiro, R.Sanz, R.Galh y A.JimCnez. IEEE Intemational Workshop on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Japan, 1990. [Rodriguez 931 Learning with Fuzzy Logic: A Way to Combine Genetic Algorithms and Fuzzy Logic. S.Rodriguez, A.Paricio and J.R.Velasco. Proc. of the 1993 International Fuzzy Systems and Intelligent Control Conference. Ralston, P.A.S and Ward, T.L. eds., Louisville, Ky., pp. 165-174, 1993. [ S a m 901 Arquitectura de Control Inteligente de Procesos. Ricardo Sanz. PhD Thesis, Departamento de Automiltica, Ingenieria Electrdnica e InformAtica Industrial of the Universidad Politknica de Madrid. Madrid, Spain 1990. [Sanz 91a] Introducci6n al Control Inteligente de Procesos. R.Sanz, A.Jimtnez, R.Galh y E.A. Puente. lnfomzlftica y Automcftica, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 5-17, Madrid, Spain 1991. [Sanz91b] Intelligent Distributed Process Control. R.Sanz, A.JimBnez, R.Galh, F.Matia, E.A.Puente. P.D.COM 91, Corffi, Grecia. 23-28 Junio de 1991. Organizado por IMACS e WAC. Intemacional. [Sam 91c] Intelligent Process Control: The CONEX Architecture. R.Sanz, A.JimBnez, R.Galh, F.Matfa, E.A.Puente. EURZSCON 91, Corfti, Grecia. June 23-28, 1991. [Sam 921 CONEX: A Distributed Architecture for Intelligent Process Control. R.Sanz, A.JimCnez, R.Galh. World Congress on Expert Systems, Orlando, U.S.A. December 16-19, 1992. [Velasco 91a] A Genetic Learning System for Economic Control on Fossil Power Plants. Juan R. Velasco, Luis Magdalena, Antonio Rodriguez. Proc. of the European Simulation Symposium, Kerckhoffs, E.J.H. and Koppelaar, H. and Van Der Beken, A. and Vansteenkiste, G.C. eds. Society for Computer Simulation, Ghent, Belgium, 1.991. Pg 31-36. [Velasco 91b] A rquitectum para Sistemus de Control Inteligentes. Juan R. Velasco. PhD Thesis. Departamento de Ingenieria de Sistemas TelemAticos. Universidad P o l i t h i c a de Madrid, 1991. [Velasco 91c] Algoritmo para Evaluaci6n de Reglas en un Sistema de Control con Aprendizaje. Juan Ram6n Velasco Perez. A ctas de la N Reunidn Tkcnica A EPIA PI A sociacidn Espatiola p m la Inteligencia A rtificial. Madrid, Spain 1.991.

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