Cloud-Based Physical Infrastructure Control Without Local Computers
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional control systems managing physical infrastructure face challenges such as unmanageable complexity, rigidity in design and implementation, and slowing rates of incremental improvements, due to their reliance on local computer systems and hardware.
Innovation Solution
Migrating traditional control systems for managing physical infrastructure, such as retail establishments and warehouses, to cloud-computing facilities, allowing for the elimination of local computers and the abstraction and virtualization of hardware systems. This approach involves moving complex management logic to cloud-computing facilities, enabling greater reliability and independence from physical infrastructure systems.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If traditional control systems are used with local computer systems, then direct control of physical infrastructure is achieved, but system complexity becomes unmanageable and improvement rates slow down
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts control logic from local physical infrastructure and relocates it to centralized cloud computing facilities. This separation removes the burden of managing complex control systems from individual locations, enabling faster improvements at the cloud level without being constrained by local hardware limitations.
Solution Approach 2:
The cloud-based control system serves multiple physical infrastructure locations simultaneously through a single centralized platform. This universal approach allows the same control logic to be deployed across numerous facilities, standardizing operations and accelerating improvement rates without proportionally increasing overall system complexity.
2Ease of operation
If local computer systems are deployed at physical infrastructure sites, then direct control is possible, but maintenance and management overhead increases
Solution Approach 1:
The cloud-based system enables centralized automated management of multiple physical infrastructure locations. The system performs self-service functions by automatically deploying control logic, monitoring performance, and managing updates across all locations without requiring local maintenance personnel, thereby reducing maintenance overhead while maintaining full control capability.
3Productivity
If cloud-based control systems are implemented, then maintenance efforts are reduced and improvement rates accelerate, but dependency on cloud infrastructure increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-loads and caches control logic and operational parameters at local edge devices before cloud connectivity is needed. This preliminary action ensures that critical control functions can continue operating autonomously even when cloud connectivity is interrupted, maintaining reliability while still benefiting from cloud-based improvement rates during connected periods.
Data Source
AI summary
The current document is directed to methods and systems that migrate traditional control systems used to manage and administer physical infrastructure, including retail establishments, warehouses, manufacturing facilities, offices, hospitals and medical clinics, and other physical infrastructure, to cloud-computing facilities. The approach to controlling physical infrastructure disclosed in the current document is not simply an extension of traditional control systems to access and use cloud-computing facilities, but instead represents the migration of physical infrastructure into cloud-computing facilities, resulting in elimination of the need for local computers and computer-implemented control systems from the physical infrastructure and a complete abstraction and virtualization of the hardware systems within the physical infrastructure. In the currently disclosed approach, complex management logic, including policy-based and rules-based management logic as well as programmed management logic, is fully migrated from physical infrastructure to cloud-computing facilities, providing greater reliability, independence from physical infrastructure systems and components, and a centralized cloud-resident infrastructure model that can be accessed and manipulated, in cloud-computing facilities, by a wide variety of different types of applications, including management applications, visualization applications, inventory-controlled applications, and security applications. This approach provides far greater freedom in design and implementation of both control systems as well as physical hardware systems, greatly accelerates the rates at which control systems and physical hardware systems can be improved, and also provides a conceptual-framework basis for rapid technological evolution of physical-infrastructure control systems.