At present, compared to our scientific knowledge of how natural biosystems function, we have practically no knowledge of how to engineer biosystems, i.e., how to design, build, repair, maintain, operate, and modify them in a rational and knowledgeable manner. Thus, the EcoCyborg research project was established with the basic intent of making a contribution to the science and engineering of biosystems. / This thesis covers three important arms of study within the overall framework of the EcoCyborg project. The first area is the development and implementation of a workbench for simulation based on composite models. The workbench was designed to accommodate easy integration, synchronization and communication of a number of independent modules. It was developed for use under OS/2 Warp, an operating system that supports multi-process simulation. The functionality of the workbench was tested with a composite model of an EcoCyborg. This composite model contained submodels of an ecosystem, two control systems, and several forcing functions. / The second area is the development and implementation of control systems for biosystems. The control system was intended to guide an ecosystem so that its behavior would best achieve the goals of the controllers which, in this case, were related to the populations of the ecosystem's species. The major part of the work on the control systems was focused on the Pavlovian controller. It mainly covered the investigation of the possibilities to develop and to implement a physiological-level Pavlovian controller. The thesis also presents results from a preliminary investigation on the design and implementation of a cognitive controller. From this, a relatively simple cognitive controller was developed to complement the action of the Pavlovian controller. / The third area is the experimental use of the workbench, and of the Pavlovian and cognitive controllers. For this, ecosystems having various constitutions and their forcing functions were modeled and used in the simulation. Pavlovian controllers with on-off, proportional and proportional plus integral mechanisms were used to control the populations. The cognitive controller was used to maintain minimum population of the various species in the ecosystem. / In general, the workbench that was developed was found suitable to accommodate the simulation of an EcoCyborg composite model. The tools that ware developed for constructing and implementing the Pavlovian controller were tested and found practical and effective for use in constructing Pavlovian controllers of various configurations. The results of the work on the cognitive controller provided useful information for its further development.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.35018 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Molenaar, Robert. |
| Contributors | Kok, Robert (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001643271, proquestno: NQ44519, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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