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The closed ecology experiment facilities(CEEF) are comprised of an animal breeding & habitation module, plant module, and a geo-hydrosphere module(currently being established), which are composed of physicochemical devices to allow almost all the material to be circulated. Partial test operations are now in progress with these kinds of equipment, and cooperative operations between an animal breeding & habitation module and plant module are expected to be started in the near future. Balance of the material and equipment performance as the whole of the system are being tested, and material circulation in a variety of operation modes is being examined. Keeping such a situation in mind, analysis is made in this report for material circulation in the plant module by itself for operations based on the equipment design data.

When discussing how to design and control a Closed Ecology Life Support System (CELSS), element-level calculations should be performed on materials circulating in the system. Performing these calculations through computer simulation allows great advantages, especially when analyzing a CELSS for applications having various forms at experimental facilities. In the present study, models for analyzing the balance and circulation of CELSS materials are developed, and material balance analysis software for CELSS (MBASC) and material circulation analysis software for CELSS (MCASC) are created using these models. The present paper proposes a new method for integrating an entire CELSS and controlling material circulation through the analysis of CELSS material circulation using the proposed software.

In recent years, with increased size of the manned space program and systems used in the programs, the role of computer simulations has increased. I have long used and developed independently several simulation tools for the design, operation, analysis, and optimization of the Life Support Systems (LSS). I recognized that the designer makes his/her own idea certain while building a simulation model on a computer. However, conventional simulation tools are not designed so that the interaction between the designer and a model building support environment is dynamically used to bring out a designer's idea. Therefore, in this paper, I consider the development of a conceptual design support tool in the design of the LSS, while focusing attention on the interaction between the simulation tool and the designer.

We developed an Advanced Life Support systems scheduler (ALS scheduler) to back up the habitation experiments of Closed Ecology Experiment Facilities (CEEF), and integrated the Lagrangian decomposition and coordination method for a scheduling algorithm of the scheduler. Later research revealed that when comparing solutions obtained by the Lagrangian decomposition and coordination method and by a skilled operator, respectively, a schedule sought by the skilled operator has different features from those of a schedule sought by the Lagrangian decomposition and coordination method. This paper describes how to generate a schedule such as one created by a skilled operator, while reducing complexity by integrating empirical knowledge to the Lagrangian decomposition and coordination method.

A habitation experiment using the Closed Ecology Experiment Facilities was started in 2005. In the future, the stays will be gradually extended. We have been developing the three layered control software for a Control Computer System of the Closed Ecology Experiment Facilities in order to back up the habitation experiments. In this paper, we will show the development of an operation scheduling system for one of the three layers, such as at the planning and scheduling level, and discuss the development of a scheduling algorithm that does not cause the complexity of the ALS scheduler to be exponentially increased.

In this paper, we describe the design of intelligent control software required for operating the Closed Ecology Experiment Facilities (CEEF) that we call Mini-Earth. We will develop intelligent control software by reconfiguring functions of a Control Computer System (CCS) for controlling the CEEF into three layers that consist of planning & scheduling, task, and control levels. In the last half of this paper, we will focus on the planning & scheduling level, and describe the operation scheduling problem of a CEEF gas circulation system using a Planning and Scheduling Language (PSL) to develop an Operation Schedule Interactive Generation system (OSIG).

In the Closed Ecology Experiment Facilities (CEEF), with integrating the Closed Plantation Experiment Facilities (CPEF) and the Closed Animal Breading & Habitation Facilities (CABHF), closed habitation experiments without material exchange with the outside will be conducted after the 2005 fiscal year. Cultivation experiments of about 30 crops and the integrating test of the material circulation system required for the closed habitation experiments have been performed since 2000 fiscal year. Using data reported in these experiments, material circulation in CEEF is simulated based on the recent operation strategy, and the storage capacity needed for the buffer of an air processing subsystem was estimated. In order for two humans to dwell over 120 days, the storage capacities of the carbon dioxide tank, the oxygen tank, and the waste gas tank in CPEF, and the carbon dioxide tank and the oxygen tank in CABHF are 820 g, 2830 g, 4425 g, 1780 g, and 1792 g, respectively.

Material circulations in a lunar base were simulated in consideration of an optimum control of electric power distributions to equipment. The base is composed of habitation and cultivation modules. The simulations of a dynamic logistic problem were conducted by the use of a fuzzy programming method, after doing the biochemical stoichiometric formulation of crew-, plant-, and machine-subsystems in living and growing modules. The simulation model could treat material circulation and electric power distribution in space systems and it could be expected to make this tool powerful combining this with experimental data.

A Regenerative Life Support System (RLSS) is a system that establishes self-sustained material recycling and circulation within a space base on the Moon or Mars. This is a large-scale and complicated system comprising a lot of components such as humans, plants and material circulation system. A RLSS contains many factors with uncertainty, such as dynamics of plants and humans, and failure and performance deterioration of devices. In addition, a RLSS is a large-scale and complicated system extending gradually. An environment with uncertainty or a large-scale and complicated system may not be properly addressed by a centralized system. In particular, such a system cannot always gather accurate information in one center in a frequently shifting environment, thus appropriate processing may be difficult. Therefore, we tried autonomous decentralization of information or decision-making using a Multi-Agent System (MAS).