Increasing Intelligent Systems’ Reliability by using Reconfiguration

Self-optimizing mechatronic systems allow the adaptation of the system’s behavior to the current situation. This can be used to actively adapt the behavior to the current degradation state of the system or of some of its components. To this end, the Multi-Level Dependability Concept has been developed. In this contribution, we show how the Multi-Level Dependability Concept has been applied to the active suspension module of an innovative rail-bound vehicle. For this module, the usage of control reconfiguration, which is a novel approach to exploit complex redundancy systems, is required. We show that by combining self-optimization with the possibilities given by control reconfiguration, the dependability of a complex mechatronic system can be greatly improved.