Introduction
Process control is the process where technologies is required to be implement and design control systems in the process industries. The main objective of the process control is to maintain and bring about the conditions of the process at optimal values. It includes computer simulation and optimization, physical and empirical modeling, automation of hardware and software, control structure design and many others. Process industries are the process where material and energy streams interact and transform each other. It includes continuous sequential processes that refer to process units, enterprises, and whole plants. Additionally, process components are also prevalent in other industries such as green buildings, automotive, nuclear power and micro-electronics.
Control of technology is everywhere. Spacecraft and aircraft, factories and process plant, buildings and homes, trains and automobile, networks and cellular telephones and other complex systems are testaments to the ubiquity of control technology. Modern aircrafts cannot perform without control. Others advances in their safety, reliability, performance, and affordability as a result of the ingenuity and effort of control scientists and engineers. The impact of control technology is matched and overmatched by its anticipated future impact. Many years of successful applications have hardly exhausted the vitality of the field. The size and number of control conferences and journals continue to grow, highlighting the significance of investment and control in technology that take place in new and old industrial sectors. Currently, control is not only considered instrumental for evolutionary improvement in solutions, systems and products; it is considered as a fundamental that enable technology to realize future visions and ambitions in the areas that are emerging such as biomedicine, renewable energy, and critical infrastructures.
In this era, complexity of technology systems demand inter and cross disciplinary research and development. Control and other fields’ collaboration have been consistently productive. There is a widening appreciation of the principles of control which has been apparent. Wherever feedback and dynamics are involved, control expertise tends to regard it as crucial. Additionally, control is also seen as a paragon of rigor and other systems perspective by experts in other distinctions, disciplines which are exploited as safety critical, larger scale, and missions critical systems that are developed. The effect of the breadth and scale control are largely unknown and unheralded.
This research focus on how to rectify the lack of awareness by highlighting the current and coming impact of control technology. It talks about the accomplishment and promise of control technology but, it does not abandon the road map theory in the field.
The controls application domains
The control science principle is considered universal, however, the control technology impact comes from the combination of these principles with considerations of specific applications. In the past, discussions that were carried out on the impact of control technology became limited to few industries. Today, tradition's domains of control have been supplemented with litany of others. However, the application domain which are represented here includes the ones whose control has historically impact is known and uses technology recently, and lastly the emerging domains that will provide new opportunities for the field.
Control has developed into highly scalable technology. In several application areas, control principles have been applied to individual’s actuators and sensors, multivariable systems and even at plant wide scales. Applications of controls that are successful do not come from the result of the control expertise alone. It has broadened the connections with new domains and traditional that have been established and strengthened. Before the control, technology pre-requisites must be satisfied especially advanced control. Many new application areas have become viable for control as a result of developments in actuators and novel sensors. However, quantifying the impact of control technology is very difficult. The algorithm control does not solve any problem in and of itself; the innovation control is linked with ancillary developments. Therefore, in cases where social and economic benefits have been estimated, the results will point to tremendous scale of impact
Cross-cutting research directions
The required research is multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, an observation that emphasize on a specific need for the controls community so that to collaborate with other fields. Sources of inspiration such as those of the cognitive sciences have been established and hence need to be established. Furthermore, network is pervasive thus it may only appear in the sections title, but it is implicit in the others. Architectures and solution methods are increasingly decentralized, distributed, collaborated and coordinated. For instance, subsystems have high degrees of heterogeneity and autonomy. An imperative research is used to figure out how we can realize the goals of the system for the performance, stability, predictability, and other properties through the system designs and subsystem interactions. The direction of research is cross-cutting in the sense that each is important for a variety of challenges that are engaging society, industry, and government. Examples include intelligent transportation systems, smart grids, emergency response teams and complex infrastructure. The interconnection between controls with other parts not being fully explored in the earlier stages. The interconnections and Integration with the humans as the users including other roles with the real time platforms, and with other systems. Complexity is a feature which is enroll in the synthesis and integration especially among optimizers and controllers, software and hardware components, humans and engineered intelligent agents in cooperative environments.
The development of military and commercial aircraft and space vehicles is not possible today without flight control systems or guidance, control systems, and navigation. In a global market, industrial competition market drives the need for continuous improvement of capabilities as well as reducing production cost and development. Occasionally, control technologies will continue to have a significant role for the successful realization of the next generation of transportation systems. It includes air traffic management and vehicles that operate in this system. Control technology plays an important role in pushing back the frontiers of space exploration and securing the environment by gathering more accurate satellite date.
Companies which operate in industries where process control is widely used, such as a petroleum industry, shows typical signs of maturity with high dividend yields and low price earnings ratios that reflect limited growth prospects. Nowadays, many vendors offer advanced solutions such as model predictive control technology, having the ability to economically optimize multivariable, and constrained processes.
Automotive control
Automotive control is the application of field vehicles on tires, such as trucks, cars, motorbikes and related infrastructures. Due to high numbers of consumers, the automobile has become a symbol of modern –era there is an increase in Homo sapiens, especially in developed countries and the emerging regions. Decades ago, automotive industries were not a major user of advanced controls, but this situation began to change years ago with the advent of smaller, cheaper, and better embedded processors and other developments. Currently, automobiles, manufacturers and suppliers have invested significantly in the control engineers of higher level. This industry became a foremost sector and more significant and is always accorded to the advanced control technology.
Application of control based approach to the complex system is very difficult since control synthesis requires abstraction and simplifications that are not so obvious. Development in industries need needs to be overlooked from early conception to maintenance and industrialization over years; therefore, the control machinery has to be translated and hence made understandable to all people in that particular workflow. This is hard but crucial task for achieving widespread market penetration. Additionally, the cost of sensors and actuators tend to reduce the high volume of production and tight margins of the business that suggest a careful evaluation of the investment return before industrialization of the new control concept. Automotive transportation should be sustainable, efficient, and safe, partly because of the concerns in environment that is partly due to the larger number of the automobile and the related fatalities with the injuries worldwide. The economic considerations of the consumers, suppliers, and manufacturers are to be taken into the account. There is an interrelation among vehicles and between vehicles and the transportation infrastructure.
Reductions of emission's successes obtained in the automotive field are strictly related to control applications. In this context, typical control problems are control of injectors, an electromechanical device, and estimation of the air flow, which in the early application is not directly measured. The approach of control has gained wider visibility among non-experts as a result of high impact applications such as the antilock braking system. Moreover, applications are apparent in the circumstances that they become mandatory through certain legislation or specific legislation calls that are used for development of control products and services so that to meet constraints, especially on emission levels.
Control part of the technology is not always perceived by consumers, instead the world control has significantly made its way to the general public mainly through driver assistance products. Introductions of cheaper and new sensors lead to success of control technology. Applications of control methods successfully developed in automotive control that specifies the structure in control thus passes throughout an artificial intelligence which controls the schemes such as fuzzy logic based controls and the neural networks based controls. Control methodologies such as state observers, Kalman filters, and online system parameter identifications are applied successfully in designing virtual sensors.
When low cost components is developed in microprocessors, sensors, actuators; this will sustain control system market penetration and hence possibly developed a more sophisticated and effective control algorithms which are characterized by significant computational loads. Opportunities mainly exist for reducing the use of look up tables by means of different algorithms control. However, there is a need for verification and validation procedures behind any control engineering achievements in the field of automotive and relative proportions of different types of competencies required.
Control technology plays a significant role in automotive vehicles and infrastructure which will continue to widen as a necessary consequence of economic, societal, and environmental requirements. This application area will attract attention from specialist and control scientist not only for the difficult problems that are needed be solved, but also because of high ratio of volumes of product and a large number of players in search of innovation and competition for the market share. Large volume will enable control experts to concentrate on the entire software development cycle, because verification and validation as well as maintenance and calibration, are sometimes very expensive items for this industry.
Control in Robotics
Invention of robots was done earlier by machine tool industry. Robot control enabled simple tasks such as spot welding and materials transfer. For instance, higher speed operations and higher payload to weight ratios required an increased understanding of the complex and interconnected nonlinear dynamics of robots. Currently, robot control systems are highly advanced with vision systems and integrated force. The primary barriers to the progress are the high cost of computation, lack of good sensors, and lack of fundamental understanding of the robot dynamics. Mobile robots are used in many applications. For example, aiding disaster recovery efforts in mines and specifically after earthquakes. Today, robots were much richer in the field than even a decade ago, with far ranging applications. Developments in new sensors, miniaturization and increasing processor power will all opened new doors for the robots.
Biomedical control system is relatively young as compared to aerospace, chemical process fields and automotive. Advanced control theory and process modelling have only recently been applied to cardiac assist device. Cardiac assist device are mechanical pumps that are used to supplement endogenous cardiac output at an appropriate pressure so that to allow normal circulation through the patient’s state. The control system is active magnetic bearing which employs a single active feedback loop for shaping. A core factor of the technology is the high reliability electronic design which knows how to transfer from aircraft control systems to the device. Therefore, in this scenario, the control system is a combination of simple feed forward methods that involve coordinating changes, adaptive synthesis of the visual models of the heart, and feedback.
There are several numbers of biomedical devices that have been translated into commercial products using closed loop technology include intracardiac electro-gram, implantable cardioverter defibrillator, and oxygen saturation monitor. Sensors are used so that to provide feedback from the system and hence control and deliver electric signals that stimulate the brain so that ease disease by determining the extent and timing of stimulation. Additionally, closed-loop temperature control has been used in ablation systems with thermocouple feedback for safety. It is important to communicate effectively the weakness and strengths of control tools and circulations of non-control expert. Secondly, requirement that interfaces for all aforementioned tools should be constructed so that the tools can be taken in a clinical environment by those conventional healthcare providers. For this to be achieved, engineers are developing new systems so that to use genetic information, small changes in the body, deliver vaccines and new drugs assess. Furthermore, engineers should advance health informatics and hence reverse the brain of the engineer.
Worldwide, most national energy policies aim at ensuring an energy portfolio that support a cleaner environment and a stronger economy that strengthens national security by providing a stable, diverse and domestic energy supply. Globally, clean energy is a global and urgent imperative. Wind, solar and smart grid concepts are important technologies that are needed so that to address global warming and related issues. The major factor that hinders control system is a decrease of cost for renewable energies to the affordable levels. Therefore, control and related technologies will be essential for solving complex problems.
Recommendations
Control technology plays a significant role in automotive vehicles and infrastructure which will continue to widen as a necessary consequence of economic, societal, and environmental requirements. This application area will attract attention from specialist and control scientist not only for the difficult problems that are required to be solved, but also because of high ratio of volumes of product and a large number of players in search of innovation and competition for the market share. Large volume will enable control experts to concentrate on the entire software development cycle, because verification and validation as well as maintenance and calibration, are sometimes very expensive items for this industry. Wind, solar and smart grid concepts are important technologies that are needed so that to address global warming and related issues. The major factor that hinders control system is a decrease of cost for renewable energies to the affordable levels. Therefore, control and related technologies will be essential for solving complex problems. It is important to communicate effectively the weakness and strengths of control tools and circulations of non-control expert. Secondly, requirement that interfaces for all aforementioned tools should be constructed so that the tools can be taken in a clinical environment by the conventional healthcare providers.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the impact of control technology is matched and overmatched by its anticipated future impact. Many years of successful applications have hardly exhausted the vitality of the field. The size and number of control conferences and journals continue to grow, highlighting the significance of investment and control in technology that take place in new and old industrial sectors. Control and other fields’ collaboration have been consistently productive. There is a widening appreciation of the principles of control which has been apparent. Wherever feedback and dynamics are involved, control expertise tends to regard it as crucial. Additionally, control is also seen as a paragon of rigor and other systems perspective by experts in other distinctions, disciplines which are exploited as safety critical, larger scale, and missions critical systems that are developed. The effect of the breadth and scale control are largely unknown and unheralded.
The algorithm control does not solve any problem in and of itself; the innovation control is linked with ancillary developments. Therefore, in cases where social and economic benefits have been estimated, the results will point to tremendous scale of impact. The interconnection between control and other areas have not been fully explored in the past. Integration and interconnections with platforms real-time, humans performing other roles, and with other systems. Complexity is a feature which is enroll in the synthesis and integration especially among optimizers and controllers, software and hardware components, humans and engineered intelligent agents in cooperative environments. In a global market, industrial competition market drives the need for continuous improvement of capabilities as well as reducing production cost and development. Application of control based approach to the complex system is very difficult since control synthesis requires abstraction and simplifications that are not so obvious. Development in industries need needs to be overlooked from early conception to maintenance and industrialization over years; therefore, the control machinery has to be translated and hence made understandable to all people in that particular workflow. This is hard but crucial task for achieving widespread market penetration.
References
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Ulsoy, Ali Galip, Huei Peng, and Melih Çakmakci. 2012. Automotive control systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Skrabec, Quentin R. 2007. George Westinghouse: gentle genius. New York: Algora Pub.
Hristu-Varsakelis, Dimitrios, and W. S. Levine. 2005. Handbook of networked and embedded control systems. Boston: Birkhäuser. http://public.eblib.com/EBLPublic/PublicView.do?ptiID=337235.
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