A Few Words About Paladin

A couple of days ago, a group of engineers training on EDSA got a chance to view a demo of Paladin. After the demo, I got a chance to sit down with the Paladin team from General Atomics to discuss their product. I would like to thank Meera, Mark, Joseph and Irene for their time and professional expertise in explaining the vision behind the Paladin project.


When I explained my take on the project, Mark Walker -- who did the demo for us -- as Paladin being like an ERP package for the technical health of an organization, he agreed. However he quickly added that, unlike many ERP implementations, Paladin projects will install on time and on budget.


The FAA is currently implementing Paladin with EDSA at key facilities. Where EDSA, on its own, can provide electrical modelling and design info; the combination of Paladin and EDSA creates a real-time model of an organization's electrical infrastructure with predictive, prescriptive and communicative capabilities. Paladin does not have an interface. As Walker explained, "we want to be HMI (Human Machine Interface) agnostic". Paladin's predictive engine -- which looks to me to be largely Bayesian -- inserts itself between the data layer of EDSA and the ouput HMI. There are a battery of web services that are used to provide business and technical rules; turning what could be a monolithic "expert" system into a svelte thin client application.


Mark noted that attempts have been made in the past 10-15 years to do the same kind of thing with architectures that were laden with problems. With web services and more open data interfaces however, predictive health monitoring for infrastructure is on the verge or a revolution. I plan to keep in touch with the team and will keep you current on the progress of Paladin.


Unfortunately, EDSA has killed direct linking on their web site. Go to edsa.com, click on the products menu and select Paladin.