Intelligent Monitoring and Control

Abstract

Intelligent monitoring and control involves obse rving and guiding the behavior of a physical system toward some objective, with realtime constraints on the utility of particular actions . Generic functional requirements for this task include : integration of perception, reasoning , and action; integration of multiple reasoning activities; reasoning about complex, timevarying systems; coordination of multiple response modes; dynamic allocation of limited c omputational resources . We illustrate these re quirements in the domain of patient monitoring in a surgical intensive care unit (SICU). We propose a generic architecture, designed and implemented in layers: top-level system organization ; reasoning architecture; generic reasoning skills and knowledge representation; firstprinciples knowledge of physical systems; domain knowledge . We illustrate the architecture in the " Guardian" system for SICU monitoring and describe Guardian's performance on an illustrative scenario . Finally, we discuss the generality and limitations of the proposed archite c ture.