A multi-alternative approach to control in open systems: origins, current state and future prospects

The paper addresses biological origins, the present state and future prospects of a multi-alternative approach to the problem of automatic control in dynamical systems. We show that this approach meets the famous Law of Requisite Variety by Ashby and generalizes natural evolutionary mechanisms of open biological systems supporting their high level of adaptation to environment changes. We provide several examples of multi-alternative control in technical systems. These examples show increase in robustness and efficiency in accordance with predictions of biological analogy. We formulate the general functional scheme of a multi-alternative control system, build its mathematical model and analyze the prospects of their extension in the context of intellectual control systems.