After a failure, the system is no longer nominal.
The nominal object P0 becomes Pd after damage. From that point, control and reconfiguration must rely on the real degraded object, not on the design-time idealization.
The nominal and the degraded objectExpand section
The nominal and the degraded object
The framework begins by rejecting the illusion that, after damage, we still control the same object. Once the structure of available resources changes, the control object itself changes as well.
After damage, the design-time model is no longer a sufficient description of the system.
This is not limited to mechanical failures. A lost sensor, a degraded actuator, a disconnected compute node or an outdated model all move the system into a different state class.
Physical and epistemic resourcesExpand section
Physical and epistemic resources
In the dissertation, a resource is broader than a hardware component. The set includes both physical means and models, estimators, identifiers and learned policies.
Z(t) = ⟨ x(t), ρ(t), cfg(t), α(t) ⟩
The later modules therefore work not with a bare state vector, but with an extended description that captures resource availability, model validity and configuration admissibility.
What this changes in the frameworkExpand section
What this changes in the framework
The configuration catalogue cannot be only a list of emergency modes. Each configuration must state which resources are active, which functions are preserved, what its survivability ceiling is, and whether it depends on an already invalid resource.