What is automation: a complex way of understanding simple things

Automation of technological processes of man was very exciting for a long time. History shows that he did this long before the appearance of machine tools, equipment, robots and conveyors. The natural ability to understand what is happening, to make decisions and do it many times over a single algorithm and in most everyday tasks has become the primary reason for the long development of the industry, which, unlike others, quickly spread its influence over all spheres of human activity.

General picture

What is automation, defines, first of all, the considered area of socio-economic space. It is difficult to imagine the technological process of production of cars without a conveyor, which involves dozens of robots waiting for details 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 warehouse operations, and shipping finished products.

At one time, the writing of programs was subjected to certification and standardization, it was defined as the procedure for preparing the terms of reference, and the stages of its implementation.

Analyzing the achieved results, one can state: what is automation, it became clear, but it is not always clear what to do next.

Stable spheres

Even in long-running industries there is no clear certainty that the level of automation technology reached reached the final stage, with which there is nowhere else to go. However, you can often be convinced of the opposite.

The production of engines for railway transport, when it was still on steam traction, became perfect, but the internal combustion engine came to replace, and the idea of what automation on the railways lost its original meaning, but only in a certain part of certain industries.

Gasoline engine did not give way, but moved when it became possible to apply electric traction. Probably, in the foreseeable future, the production of railway transport will finally give up engines, and it will move by means of pneumatics and / or electromagnetic force - this is the natural completion of the technology of moving something along exact routes at a particular time.

The railroad is an example of a stable sphere in which everything develops precisely according to the objectively accessible results of other technologies.

Perspective Areas

However, even in rail transport, there are a lot of uncertainties and opportunities for improving technological processes. For example, traffic is a serious mathematical problem. With the growth in the volume of passenger and cargo transportation, with the increase in the railway network, traffic management has become a truly endless task, which develops from the point of view of the initial data, as well as the algorithm for scheduling the traffic at a particular time.

The inventions, accompanying the 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 social and economic space and the stagnation of beliefs at that time prevented this from happening.

Always and everywhere once the machine, robot, automaton or other element of automation technology was perfected and without the help of TRIZ, which the creators could not make accessible primarily because of their own misunderstanding, how to translate it, how to automate the obvious.

In this respect, it is characteristic that TRIZ is the result of 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 have taken 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, performing automatically many useful functions. It is characteristic that the UAV appeared much later than the first satellite flew into orbit.

Intellectual start: from natural to artificial

What is automation and what is artificial intelligence? Two concepts that live their own lives, the latter being the nutrient medium of the former. Idealists build a theory, write fantastic works about creating a mind, analyze the consequences of his coming, design talking robots or do something different, sort of as completely useless.

Practices automate the work of a person in any form, at a particular time and through specific tools. The influence of the idealists is not so obvious, but much more globally. Nobody imagined that the Ryazan gubernia would give the world Tsiolkovsky, which would provide the Queen with the opportunity to launch Gagarin into space, but how many people took part in all stages of this complex technological process. How many amazing inventions, discoveries, robots, machines, materials appeared.

Computer business, as a basis not only in the field of automation of technologies and production, but also for the development of the scientific and technical process, will undoubtedly change the appearance of the concept of what automation is. But first of all, it must change itself: for too long its technology has remained at the level of the last century. The outer shell is not the essence of things, but merely a means of communicating the idea with the surrounding space.

The latter should understand the first, well, and in the process of its misunderstanding, give the idea a difficult path so that it can grow stronger.