A pattern schema for complex controllers

Modern control systems are very complex applications that pose special difficulties to systems designers. Design patterns are common in the field of automatic control but in most cases they are restricted to small subfields of application. In this paper we propose a pattern schema with two particular properties: i) it deals with some issues very relevant to control designers and ii) it is generic enough to gather under the same umbrella an heterogeneous collection of patterns ranging from basic, elementary control components to plant-wide systems. This schema is being used in the implementation of a pattern language for the integrated control architecture project.