Platform Intelligence and Control – What Does the Future Look Like?

Throughout the years since the advent of the electronic computer, the speed of processing and availability of memory have increased at a consistent rate in line with the perception of ‘Moore’s Law’, that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles every two years though the cost of computers is halved.
As this availability of computing power has increased, as has the desire of engineers to monitor, record and analyse increasing aspects of equipment. This desire has led to increasingly complex monitoring and recording systems, with increasingly complex control system to attempt to analyse and present this information in a useful manner.
The systems that perform this function have become increasingly complex, and with the complexity come cost, and programme risk, with these systems now approaching or on the critical path. These systems now combine many functions including: providing indication to an operator, recording data for incident analysis, tracking data for maintainers, providing condition assessments, automated control of functions, and now approaching full automated control of the entire platform.
With the relentless progression towards ever bigger data, what should the intelligence and control system of the future look like? This paper seeks to explore the options that may be, or become, available in regard to how the hardware is selected and configured: how data is collected, sorted and prioritised: how security and integrity of data is embedded; how the requirements of data integrity and security are met without imposing the most demanding requirements on all elements.
While a definitive answer is unlikely to exist, the issues are becoming more well-known and the impacts keenly felt across our industry.