Over the past few decades, some innovations in Industrial Automation, in terms of PLC, DCS & SCADA have indeed given industrial automation a continuous gradual growth; those functions will simply be embedded in hardware and software in future. Instead the real growth surge will come from totally new directions.
New technology directions
Industrial automation can and will generate explosive growth with technology related to new inflection points: nanotechnology and nanoscale assembly systems; MEMS and nanotech sensors (tiny, low-power, low-cost sensors) which can measure everything and anything; and the pervasive Internet, machine to machine (M2M) networking.
Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) is the integration of a number of microcomponents on a single chip which allows the microsystem to both sense and control the environment.
The components typically include microelectronic integrated circuits (the “brains”), sensors (the “senses” and “nervous system”), and actuators (the “hands” and “arms”).
MEMS applications are growing fast. They are currently used in:
1. Washing machines – vibration sensors for load imbalance
2. Cars – accelerometers (air bags), roll sensors, ABS
3. Vacuums – dirt sensors
4. Microwave ovens – strain gages for food weight
& in Home Theater, cell phones, ear thermometers, stud finders, inkjet printers, game pads for video games, disk drives, robotics, projection displays, and many more
“Machine-to-Machine (M2M)”& “Pervasive Internet” are all terms that point to the advent of enabling technologies for networking products and devices. Visionary product manufacturers and service companies are already using embedded computing and networking technologies to deliver smart, remotely monitorable goods that will support entirely new modes of customer-interaction and service delivery.
M2M is the technology that allows both wireless and wired systems to communicate with other devices of the same ability. M2M uses a device (such as a sensor or meter) to capture an event (such as temperature, inventory level, etc.), which is relayed through a network (wireless, wired or hybrid) to an application (software program), that translates the captured event into meaningful information (for example, items need to be restocked)
Real-time systems will give way to complex adaptive systems and multi-processing. The future belongs to nanotech, wireless everything, and complex adaptive systems.
Major new software applications will be in wireless sensors and distributed peer-to-peer networks – tiny operating systems in wireless sensor nodes, and the software that allows nodes to communicate with each other as a larger complex adaptive system. That is the wave of the future.
So, in general, innovation and technology can and will reestablish growth in industrial automation.
Source: Automation.com, smalltechconsulting.com