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Arstrom Automatic Control - The Hidden Technology

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23 views

Arstrom Automatic Control - The Hidden Technology

Uploaded by

ViberA e IP
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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1

Automatic Control- The Hidden Technology


o
K.]. Astrom

Department of Automatic Control, Lund Institute of Technology, Lund,


Sweden, e-mail: [email protected]

Summary. The field of automatic control is about 50 years old. This paper
presents some reflections on the dynamic development. Automatic control rep-
resented a paradigm shift from the traditional split of engineering into civil, me-
chanical, electrical, and chemical. Key ideas in the development are presented.
The interplay of theory and applications are discussed as well as relations to
other fields such as mathematics and computer science. It is attempted to make
an assessment of the current status. The lecture ends with some speculations
about future development.

1 Introduction

Automatic control systems are today pervasive. They appear practically


everywhere in our homes, in industry, in communications systems, in all
types of vehicles and in scientific instruments. Control systems are in-
creasingly becoming mission critical, a failure of the control system will
thus lead to a system failure. In spite of this automatic control is not very
much talked about. It is therefore appropriate to label the technology the
hidden technology. Automatic control is now (1999) about 50 years old.
Books about history of automatic control are appearing, for example [49],
[9], [10]. Sessions on history of control have also been introduced in many
of the conferences. The purpose of this paper is not to give an historical

P. M. Frank (ed.), Advances in Control


© Springer-Verlag London Limited 1999
2 K. ,J. AstrCllll

account but rather to give some personal reflections on the development


of the field.
Education and research in engineering grew out of specific technologies
such as mining, building of roads and dams, construction of mechanical
and machines, generation and transmission of electricity, and industrial
use of chemistry. This led to an organization of engineering schools based
on departments of mining, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, elec-
trical engineering, and chemical engineering etc. This served very well in
the en of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The
situation changed significantly with the advent of fields like automatic
control, that cut cross traditional department boundaries. Industry has
adapted quickly to the new demands but academia has not.
Automatic control is crucial for practically all engineering activity. Typ-
ical examples are generation and transmission of energy, process control,
manufacturing, communication, transportation and entertainment. Auto-
matic control has been a key element in the design of experimental equip-
ment and instrumentation used in basic sciences. Principles of automatic
control also have impact on such diverse fields as economics, biology, and
medicine.
Automatic control, like many other branches of engineering science,
has developed in the same pattern as natural science. Although there are
strong similarities between natural science, and engineering science it is
important to realize that there are some fundamental differences. The
inspiration for natural science is to understand phenomena in nature.
This has led to a strong emphasis on analysis and isolation of specific
phenomena, an extreme case being particle physics. A key goal is to find
basic laws that describe nature. The inspiration of engineering science
is to understand, invent, and design man-made technical systems. This
places much more emphasis on design. It is natural to consider interaction
instead of isolation. A key goal is to find system principles that makes it
possible to effectively deal with complex systems. Feedback, which is at
the heart of automatic control, is an example of such a principle.
The wide applicability of automatic control has many advantages, but
it has also created some difficulties. Because automatic control can be
used in so many different fields, it is a very good vehicle for technology
transfer. There are of course also difficulties, one of them is to keep a
proper balance and a good perspective.

2 The Roots

Although we can find very early examples of the use of feedback, the
development of automatic control is strongly connected to the industrial
developments associated with the industrial revolution. Whenever new
sources of power were discovered the need to control them immediately

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