Toward a General Model of Supervisory Control

Abstract

The supervisory control paradigm applies to situations where a person allocates his attention among various graphical or alphanumeric displays and intermittently communicates new programs to a computer which itself is in continuous direct control of a physical process. It applies, for example, to piloting or ground control of modern aircraft, to supervision of nuclear power plants and large chemical plants, to monitoring and reprogramming of industrial robots (see preview paper on models in this volume). Figure 1 illustrates the supervisory paradigm. The functions of each of the five elements are listed in the figure below the corresponding box.