Change - the only constant
- Change is occurring faster than ever before
- Caused primarily by technology advances
- The technology treadmill
Process automation & controls
- We moved during the last 50 years
- From pneumatic controls (some still around)
- To electronics (vacuum tubes) to transistors to integrated circuits
- Direct Digital Controls (DDC) gave way to Distributed Control Systems (DCS)
- Now we have networked PC-based control systems
Discrete Automation
- Contactors relays and motor controls became programmable logic controllers offering better alternatives for control
- PLCs are now a commodity business
- Software
- Hard-wired relay-ladder-logic became programmable
- Programmable via PC software
- Embedded software
New age connectivity
- Every digital and analog I/O point is getting "connected"
- Eliminating the old "islands of automation"
- Introducing visions of vast arrays of interconnected "appliances"
Smart "appliances"
- Information needed from each product
- History, part number, where purchased, when installed, by who, key characteristics, specifications, operating instructions, diagnostics, availability of spares, replacement alternatives, repair instructions, etc.
- In the past, this information would be in printed documentation, or with trained experts
- In the future, the I/O appliance itself will contain all of the required "knowledge", embedded within it and always accessible
Technology Moves on
- Today large, expensive and dumb
- Sensors lack intelligence - they simply provide measurements for remote processing
- Tomorrow tiny, cheap and smart
- MEMS and Nanotechnology will yield tiny, low cost, low power sensors
- Tiny is important – scattered around to measure just about everything that you can imagine
- Low power – won't need to carry a large battery
- Low-cost – numbers required will be enormous
Automation inflection points
- Wireless sensors everywhere
- MEMS - Microelectromechanical systems
- NEMS - Nano Electromechanical systems
- Complex adaptive system (CAS)
Wireless sensors everywhere
- Wireless sensor networks will soon become as important as the Internet
- Just as the Internet allows access to digital information anywhere, sensor networks will provide vast arrays of real-time, remote interaction with the physical world
- The process monitoring and controls business will be generating significant growth in this new arena
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Smart wireless networks
- Will soon be everywhere around us
- Collecting and processing vast amounts data – not just monitoring a few isolated sensors, but literally tens of thousands of intelligent sensor nodes
- Providing not merely local measurements, but overall patterns of change
Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)
- Semiconductor fabrication techniques
- Miniature turbines, motors, gears, moving mirrors
- Sensors, actuators, and displays
- Size and cost bring practical utilization
- Tremendous number of old and new applications
Nanotechnology
- Small dimensions, big differences
- At nanometer dimensions, the classical laws of physics change
- New materials - smaller, stronger, tougher, lighter, resilient
- Practical nanotech materials
- Different characteristics when "assembled" at a molecular level
- Carbon nanotubes - strongest and most conductive fibers
- Nano-structured membranes for efficient filtering of pollutants
- New gadgets galore
Today's supercomputer – tomorrow's wristwatch or PDA- Tiny, inexpensive nanosensors - wireless networks, medical diagnostics, chemical and biohazard detection
- Carbon nanotube transistors
- Smaller than any possible silicon transistor, better performance
- New ways of storing information
NEMS - Nano Electro Mechanical Systems
- Nanotechnology - products at atomic-scale
- Old-style metal bending, grinding and cutting will become obsolete
- Build-to-order
- Materials with flawless internal structures
- Stronger and lighter, less wear
- Electronics will get smaller and faster
- Atomic-scale quantum effects - computing performance beyond today's wildest dreams
Complex adaptive systems
- New self-organizing, peer-to-peer networks
- Intelligence resides directly in sensors and actuators
- Eliminating large, complex, and ineffective centralized control systems
- Today's PLC and PC-based controls & software will seem ineffective, expensive, and even archaic
- CAS provides a level of effectiveness and robustness that is unprecedented
- Old deterministic control architectures will disappear
New functions & applications
- Within the next few years, significant new technology will provide completely new functions
Provide vast productivity and quality improvements in process systems
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