Automation of human technological processes worried a very long time. History shows that he did this long before the advent of machine tools, equipment, robots, and conveyors. The natural ability to understand what is happening, make decisions and do it many times according to a single algorithm and in most everyday tasks has become the initial reason for the long formation of the industry, which, unlike others, quickly spread its influence over all areas of human activity.
Overall picture
What is automation, determines, first of all, the considered area of socio-economic space. It is difficult to imagine the technological process of producing cars without a conveyor, on which dozens of robots are awaiting, waiting for parts from other automated units.
Production, from an economic point of view, is the process of processing raw materials into a finished product, which, in addition to the real process, is characterized by the need to automate the operations of supplying raw materials, supplying tools and materials, organizing the work of the warehouse, and shipping finished products.
At one time, the writing of programs was subjected to certification and standardization, both the procedure for the preparation of technical specifications and the stages of its implementation were determined.
Analyzing the achieved results, it can be argued: what is automation, it became clear, but it is not always clear what to do next.
Stable spheres
Even at long-running plants, there is no clear certainty that the achieved level of automation technology has reached the final stage, with which there is nowhere to go. However, you can often verify the opposite.
The production of engines for railway transport, when it was still steam-powered, became perfect, but the internal combustion engine replaced the idea of what automation is on the railway, lost its original meaning, but only in a certain part of certain industries.
The gas engine did not yield, but moved when it became possible to apply electric traction. Probably, in the foreseeable future, the production of railway transport will completely abandon engines, and it will move through pneumatics and / or electromagnetic force - this is the natural completion of the development of the technology of moving something along exact routes at a specific time.
The railway is a good example of a stable sphere in which everything develops precisely according to the objectively accessible results of other technologies.
Promising areas
However, even in rail transport, there are many uncertainties and opportunities for improving technological processes. For example, traffic is a serious mathematical problem. With the growth of passenger and freight traffic, with the increase of the railway network, traffic control has become a truly endless task, which is developing both from the point of view of the initial data and in relation to the algorithm for scheduling traffic at a specific time.
Inventions, accompanying automation processes, turned out to be the subject of the TRIZ theory, which at the time of its appearance could become a truly cardinal leap forward, but the slowness of the surrounding socio-economic space and the inertness of convictions at that moment did not allow this to happen.
Always and everywhere, once a created machine, robot, automatic machine or other element of automation technology was improved without the help of TRIZ, which the creators could not make available primarily because of their own misunderstanding of how to translate this, how to automate the obvious.
In this regard, it is characteristic that TRIZ is the result of a generalization of automation processes, and the development of a particular machine is a private matter. If the machine today began to work at a qualitatively higher level, then its creators took into account a new understanding of objective reality.
Information technology is the result of the development of automation in its highest form. Computer and programming gave life to CNC machines and the ability to fly unmanned vehicles into space, and just above the ground, automatically performing many useful functions. It is characteristic that UAVs appeared much later than the first satellite flew into orbit.
The intellectual principle: from natural to artificial
What is automation and what is artificial intelligence? Two concepts that live their own lives, the latter being the breeding ground of the former. Idealists build a theory, compose fantastic works on the creation of the mind, analyze the consequences of its coming, design talking robots or do something else, sort of completely useless.
Practices automate the work of man in any form, at a particular moment in time and through specific tools. The influence of idealists is not so obvious, but much more global. No one imagined that the Ryazan province would give the world Tsiolkovsky, which would provide the Queen with the opportunity to launch Gagarin into space, but how many people took part at all stages of this complex technological process. How many amazing inventions, discoveries, robots, machine tools, materials came into being.
Computer business, as the basis not only in the field of automation of technology and production, but also for the development of the scientific and technological process, will certainly change the face of the concept of what automation is. But first of all, it must change itself: for too long its technologies remain at the level of the last century. The outer shell is not the essence of things, but just a means of communicating the idea with the surrounding space.
The latter should understand the first, but in the process of misunderstanding, give the idea a difficult path so that it can grow stronger.