Computer system and method for signal control prioritizing and scheduling

摘要

This invention provides a computer operated process control system and method for controlling an external process control system using a combined rule-based expert system in combination with a procedural control system. The computer operated process control system includes a first storage mechanism (18) which includes both the expert rule data on agenda (54) and scripts (52) which are procedurally based. Input data from the external process control system is as acquired in an acquisition system (46) where it is acquired and reduced and then inserted into a second storage system (20) where such as processed and where significant variances in data input are when output to a real time engine (100). An inference engine (16) accepts rules from the agenda (54) and outputs a second command signal to an interpreter (14) based upon the varying data and the appropriate commands from rules on agenda (54). Simultaneously, data is inserted from the script list (52) to a scheduler (12) which provides a first command signal to the interpreter (14). Based upon a prioritizing schedule, output signals are passed to an input/output formatter (24) where commands are sent to the external process system. In this manner an expert system is merged with a procedural language system and provides increased efficiency as well as capability to control external process systems.