Springer Handbook of Automation

Springer Handbook

of Automation

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123

Handbook Springer

of Automation

Nof (Ed.)

With DVD-ROM, 1005 Figures, 222 in four color and 149 Tables

Editor

Shimon Y. Nof

Purdue University

PRISM Center, and School of Industrial Engineering

315 N. Grant Street

West Lafayette IN 47907, USA

[email protected]

ISBN: 978-3-540-78830-0 e-ISBN: 978-3-540-78831-7

DOI 10.1007/978-3-540-78831-7

Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008934574

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V

Dedication

This Springer Handbook is dedicated to all of us who collaborate with automation to advance humanity.

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VII

Foreword

Automation Is for Humans and for Our Environment

Preparing to write the Foreword for this outstanding

Springer Handbook of Automation, I have followed Shi￾mon Y. Nof’s statement in his Preface vision: “The

purpose of this Handbook is to understand automa￾tion knowledge and expertise for the solution of human

society’s significant challenges; automation provided

answers in the past, and it will be harnessed to do so

in the future.” The significant challenges are becoming

ever more complex, and learning how to address them

with the help of automation is significant too. The publi￾cation of this Handbook with the excellent information

and advice by a group of top international experts is,

therefore, most timely and relevant.

The core of any automatic system is the idea of

feedback, a simple principle governing any regulation

process occurring in nature. The process of feedback

governs the growth of living organisms and regulates

an innumerable quantity of variables on which life is

based, such as body temperature, blood pressure, cells

concentration, and on which the interaction of living

organisms with the environment is based, such as equi￾librium, motion, visual coordination, response to stress

and challenge, and so on.

Humans have always copied nature in the design

of their inventions: feedback is no exception. The in￾troduction of feedback in the design of man-made

automation processes occurred as early as in the golden

century of Hellenistic civilization, the third century BC.

The scholar Ktesibios, who lived in Alexandria circa

240–280 BC and whose work has been handed to us

only by the later roman architect Vitruvius, is credited

for the invention of the first feedback device. He used

feedback in the design of a water clock. The idea was to

obtain a measure of time from the inspection of the po￾sition of a floater in a tank of water filled at constant

velocity. To make this simple principle work, Ktesi￾bios’s challenge was to obtain a constant flow of water

in the tank. He achieved this by designing a feedback

device in which a conic floating valve serves the dual

purpose of sensing the level of water in a compartment

and of moderating the outflow of water.

The idea of using feedback to moderate the ve￾locity of rotating devices eventually led to the design

of the centrifugal governor in the 18th century. In

1787, T. Mead patented such a device for the regula￾Alberto Isidori

President IFAC

tion of the rotary motion of a wind

mill, letting the sail area be de￾creased or increased as the weights

in the centrifugal governor swing

outward or, respectively, inward. The

same principle was applied two years

later, by M. Boulton and J. Watt,

to control the steam inlet valve of

a steam engine. The basic simple

idea of proportional feedback was

further refined in the middle of the

19th century, with the introduction

of integral control to compensate

for constant disturbances. W. von Siemens, in the 1880s,

designed a governor in which integral action, achieved

by means of a wheel-and-cylinder mechanical integra￾tor, was deliberately introduced. The same principle of

proportional and integral feedback gave rise, by the

turning of the century, to the first devices for the auto￾matic steering of ships, and became one of the enabling

technologies that made the birth of aviation possible.

The development of sensors, essential ingredients in

any automatic control system, resulted in the creation

of new companies.

The perception that feedback control and, in a wider

domain, automation were taking the shape of an au￾tonomous discipline, occurred at the time of the second

world war, where the application to radar and artillery

had a dramatic impact, and immediately after. By the

early 1950s, the principles of this newborn discipline

quickly became a core ingredient of most industrial en￾gineering curricula, professional and academic societies

were established, textbooks and handbooks became

available. At the beginning of the 1960s, two new driv￾ing forces provoked an enormous leap ahead: the rush to

space, and the advent of digital computers in the imple￾mentation of control system. The principles of optimal

control, pioneered by R. Bellman and L. Pontryagin, be￾came indispensable ingredients for the solution of the

problem of soft landing on the moon and in manned

space missions. Integrated computer control, introduced

in 1959 by Texaco for set point adjustment and coor￾dination of several local feedback loops in a refinery,

quickly became the standard technique for controlling

industrial processes.

VIII

Those years saw also the birth of an International

Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), as a multi￾national federation of scientific and/or engineering

societies each of which represents, in its own nation,

values and interests of scientists and professionals ac￾tive in the field of automation and in related scientific

disciplines. The purpose of such Federation, established

in Heidelberg in 1956, is to facilitate growth and dis￾semination of knowledge useful to the development

of automation and to its application to engineering

and science. Created at a time of acute international

tensions, IFAC was a precursor of the spirit of the so￾called Helsinki agreements of scientific and technical

cooperation between east and west signed in 1973. It

represented, in fact, a sincere manifestation of interest,

from scientists and professionals of the two confronting

spheres of influence in which the world was split at that

time, toward a true cooperation and common goals. This

was the first opportunity, after the Second World War

that scientists and engineers had of sharing complemen￾tary scientific and technological backgrounds, notably

the early successes in the space race in the Soviet Union

and the advent of electronic computers in the United

States. The first President of IFAC was an engineer

from the Unites States, while the first World Congress

of the Federation was held in Moscow in 1960. The

Federation currently includes 48 national member orga￾nizations, runs more than 60 scientific Conferences with

a three-year periodicity, including a World Congress of

Automatic Control, and publishes some of the leading

Journals in the field.

Since then, three decades of steady progresses fol￾lowed. Automation is now an essential ingredient in

manufacturing, in petrochemical, pharmaceutical, and

paper industry, in mining and metal industry, in conver￾sion and distribution of energy, and in many services.

Feedback control is indispensable and ubiquitous in au￾tomobiles, ships and aircrafts. Feedback control is also

a key element of numerous scientific instruments as well

as of consumer products, such as compact disc players.

Despite of this pervasive role of automation in every as￾pect of the technology, its specific value is not always

perceived as such and automation is often confused with

other disciplines of engineering. The advent of robotics,

in the late 1970s, is, in some sense, an exception to this,

because the impact of robotics in modern manufacturing

industry is under the eyes of everybody. However, also

in this case there is a tendency to consider robotics and

the associated impact on industry as an implementation

of ideas and principles of computer engineering rather

than principles of automation and feedback control.

In the recent years, though, automation and control

have experienced a third, tumultuous expansion. Pro￾gresses in the automobile industry in the last decade

have only been possible because of automation. Feed￾back control loops pervade our cars: steering, breaking,

attitude stabilization, motion stabilization, combustion,

emissions are all feedback controlled. This is a dramatic

change that has revolutionized the way in which cars

are conceived and maintained. Industrial robots have

reached a stage of full maturity, but new generations of

service robots are on their way. Four-legged and even

two-legged autonomous walking machines are able to

walk through rough terrains, service robot are able to

autonomously interact with uncertain environment and

adapt their mission to changing tasks, to explore hos￾tile or hazardous environments and to perform jobs

that would be otherwise dangerous for humans. Service

robots assist elderly or disabled people and are about

to perform routine services at home. Surgical robotics

is a reality: minimally invasive micro robots are able to

move within the body and to reach areas not directly ac￾cessible by standard techniques. Robots with haptic in￾terfaces, able to return a force feedback to a remote hu￾man operator, make tele-surgery possible. New frontiers

of automation encompass applications in agriculture, in

recycling, in hazardous waste disposal, in environment

protection, and in safe and reliable transportation.

At the dawn of the 20th century, the determinis￾tic view of classical mechanics and some consequent

positivistic philosophic beliefs that dominated the 19th

century had been shaken by the advent of relativistic

physics. Today, after a century dominated by the expan￾sion of technology and, to some extent, by the belief

that no technological goal was impossible to achieve,

similar woes are feared. The clear perception that re￾sources are limited, the uncertainty of the financial

markets, the diverse rates of development among na￾tions, all contribute to the awareness that the model

of development followed in so far in the industrialized

world will change. Today’s wisdom and beliefs may

not be the same tomorrow. All these expected changes

might provide yet another great opportunity for au￾tomation. Automation will no longer be seen only as

automatic production, but as a complex of technologies

that guarantee reliability, flexibility, safety, for humans

as well as for the environment. In a world of limited

resources, automation can provide the answer to the

challenges of a sustainable development. Automation

has the opportunity of making a greater and even more

significant impact on society. In the first half of the 20th

century, the precepts of engineering and management

IX

helped solving economic recession and ease social anx￾iety. Similar opportunities and challenges are occurring

today.

This leading-edge Springer Handbook of Automa￾tion will serve as a highly useful and powerful tool and

companion to all modern-day engineers and managers

in their respective profession. It comes at an appropriate

time, and provides a fundamental core of basic prin￾ciples, knowledge and experience by means of which

engineers and managers will be able to quickly respond

to changing automation needs and to find creative so￾lutions to the challenges of today’s and tomorrow’s

problems.

It has been a privilege for many members of

IFAC to participate with Springer Publishers, Dr. Shi￾mon Y. Nof, and the over 250 experts, authors and

reviewers, in creating this excellent resource of au￾tomation knowledge and ideas. It provides also a full

and comprehensive spectrum of current and prospec￾tive automation applications, in industry, agriculture,

infrastructures, services, health care, enterprise and

commerce. A number of recently developed concepts

and powerful emerging techniques are presented here

for the first time in an organized manner, and clearly il￾lustrated by specialists in those fields. Readers of this

original Springer Handbook of Automation are offered

the opportunity to learn proven knowledge from un￾derlying basic theory to cutting-edge applications in

a variety of emerging fields.

Alberto Isidori

Rome, March 2009

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XI

Foreword

Automation Is at the Center of Human Progress

As I write this Foreword for the new Springer Hand￾book of Automation, the 2008 United States presidential

elections are still in full swing. Not a day seems to go by

without a candidate or newscaster opining on the impact

of cheaper, offshore labor on the US economy. Similar

debates are taking place in other developed countries

around the globe.

Some argue that off-shoring jobs leads to higher

unemployment and should be prohibited. Indeed some

regions have passed legislation prohibiting their local

agencies from moving work to lower cost locations.

Proponents argue off-shoring leads to lower unem￾ployment. In their view freeing up of the labor force

from lower skilled jobs allows more people to enter

higher value jobs which are typically higher paying.

This boosts incomes and in turn overall domestic con￾sumption.

Then, what about automation? Is the displacement

or augmentation of human labor with an automated ma￾chine bad for our economies, too? If so, let’s ban it!

So, let’s imagine a world in which automation didn’t

exist. . . .

To begin I wouldn’t be writing this Foreword on my

laptop computer since the highly sophisticated automa￾tion necessary to manufacture semiconductors wouldn’t

exist. That’s okay I’ll just use my old typewriter. Oops,

the numerical controlled machines required to manu￾facture the typewriter’s precision parts wouldn’t exist.

What about pencil and paper? Perhaps, but could I af￾ford them given that there would be no sensors and

controls needed to manufacture them in high volume?

IBM has been a leader and pioneer in many automa￾tion fields, both as a user and a provider of automation

solutions. Beyond productivity and cost-effectiveness,

automation also enables us to effectively monitor pro￾cess quality, reveal to us opportunities for improvement

and innovation, and assure product and service depend￾ability and service-availability. Such techniques and

numerous examples to advance with automation, as

users and providers, are included in this Springer Hand￾book of Automation.

The expanding complexity and magnitude of high￾priority society’s problems, global needs and competi￾tion forcefully challenge organizations and companies.

To succeed, they need to understand detailed knowledge

J. Bruce Harreld

Senior Vice President IBM

of many of the topics included in this

Springer Handbook of Automation.

Beyond an extensive reference re￾source providing the expert answers

and solutions, readers and learners

will be enriched from inspiration to

innovate and create powerful appli￾cations for specific needs and chal￾lenges.

The best example I know is

one I have witnessed first hand at

IBM. Designing, developing, and

manufacturing state-of-the art micro￾processors have been a fundamental driver of our suc￾cess in large computer and storage systems. Thirty years

ago the manufacturing process for these microproces￾sors was fairly manual and not very capital intense.

Today we manufacture microprocessors in a new state￾of-the-art US$ 3 billion facility in East Fishkill, New

York. This fabrication site contains the world’s most ad￾vanced logistics and material handling system including

real-time process control and fully automated workflow.

The result is a completely touchless process that in turn

allows us to produce the high quality, error free, and ex￾tremely fast microprocessors required for today’s high

end computing systems.

In addition to chapters devoted to a variety of indus￾try and service automation topics, this Springer Hand￾book of Automation includes useful, well-organized

information and examples on theory, tools, and their

integration for successful, measurable results.

Automation is often viewed as impacting only the

tangible world of physical products and facilities. For￾tunately, this is completely wrong! Automation has also

dramatically improved the way we develop software at

IBM. Many years ago writing software was much like

writing a report with each individual approaching the

task quite differently and manually writing each line of

code. Today, IBM’s process for developing software is

extremely automated with libraries of previously writ￾ten code accessible to all of our programmers. Thus,

once one person develops a program that performs

a particular function, it is quickly shared and reused

around the globe. This also allows us to pass a project

to and from one team to the next so we can speed up cy-

XII

cle times for our clients by working on their projects 24

hours a day. The physical process of writing the lines

of code has been replaced with pointing and clicking

at objects on a computer screen. The result has been

a dramatic reduction in mistakes with a concomitant

increase in productivity. But we expect and anticipate

even more from automation in support of our future,

and the knowledge and guidelines on how to do it are

described in this Springer Handbook of Automation.

The examples illustrated above highlight an im￾portant point. While we seldom touch automation, it

touches us everyday in almost everything we do. Human

progress is driven by day-to-day improvements in how

we live. For more than one hundred years automation

has been at the center of this exciting and meaningful

journey. Since ancient history, humans have known how

to benefit civilization with automation.

For engineers, scientists, managers and inventors,

automation provides an exciting and important oppor￾tunity to implement ingenious human intelligence in

automatic solutions for many needs, from simple appli￾cations, to difficult and complex requirements. Increas￾ingly, multi-disciplinary cooperation in the study of

automation helps in this creative effort, as detailed well

in this Springer Handbook of Automation, including

automatic control and mechatronics, nano-automation

and collaborative, software-based automation concepts

and techniques, from current and proven capabilities to

emerging and forthcoming knowledge.

It is quite appropriate, therefore, that this original

Springer Handbook of Automation has been published

now. Its scope is vast and its detail deep. It covers the

history as well as the social implications of automation.

Then it dives into automation theory and techniques,

design and modeling, and organization and manage￾ment. Throughout the 94 chapters written by leading

world experts, there are specific guidelines and exam￾ples of the application of automation in almost every

facet of today’s society and industry. Given this rich

content I am confident that this Handbook will be useful

not only to students and faculty but practitioners, re￾searchers and managers across a wide range of fields

and professions.

J. Bruce Harreld

Armonk, January 2009

XIII

Foreword

Dawn of Industrial Intelligent Robots

This Handbook is a significant educational, professional

and research resource for anyone concerned about au￾tomation and robotics. It can serve well for global

enterprises and for education globally. The impacts of

automation in many fields have been and are essential

for increasing the intelligence of services and of in￾teraction with computers and with machines. Plenty of

illustrations and statistics about the economics and so￾phistication impacts of automation are included in this

Handbook.

Automation, in general, includes many computer

and communication based applications, computer￾integrated design, planning, management, decision

support, informational, educational, and organizational

resources, analytics and scientific applications, and

more. There are also many automation systems involv￾ing robots. Robots have emerged from science fiction

into industrial reality in the middle of the 20th Century,

and are now available worldwide as reliable, industrially

made, automated and programmable machines.

The field of robotics application is now expand￾ing rapidly. As widely known, about 35% of industrial

robots in the world are operating in Japan. In the 1970s,

Japan started to introduce industrial robots, especially

automotive spot welding robots, thereby establishing

the industrial robot market. As the industries flourished

and faced labor shortage, Japan introduced industrial

robots vigorously. Industrial robots have since earned

recognition as being able to perform repetitive jobs con￾tinuously, and produce quality products with reliability,

convincing the manufacturing industry that it is keenly

important to use them skillfully so as to achieve its

global impact and competitiveness.

In recent years, the manufacturing industry faces

severe cost competition, shorter lead-time, and skilled

worker shortage in the aging society with lower birth

rates. It is also required to manufacture many varieties

of products in varied quantity. Against this backdrop,

there is a growing interest in industrial intelligent robots

as a new automation solution to these requirements. In￾telligence here is not defined as human intelligence or

a capacity to think, but as a capacity comparable to

Seiuemon Inaba

Chairman Fanuc Ltd.

that of a skilled worker, with which

a machine can be equipped.

Disadvantages of relatively sim￾ple, playback type robots without

intelligent abilities result in rela￾tively higher equipment costs for the

elaborate peripheral equipment re￾quired, such as parts feeders and part

positioning fixtures. Additionally for

simpler robots, human workers must

daily pre-position work-pieces in

designated locations to operate the

robots. In contrast, intelligent robots

can address these requirements with their vision sensor,

serving as the eye, and with their force sensor, serving

as the hand providing sense of touch. These intelligent

robots are much more effective and more useful. For

instance, combined with machine tools as Robot Cells

they can efficiently load/unload work-pieces to/from

machine tools, thereby reducing machining costs sub￾stantially by enabling machine tools to operate long

hours without disruptions. These successful solutions

with industrial intelligent robots have established them

as a key automation component to improve global com￾petitiveness of the manufacturing industry. It signifies

the dawn of the industrial intelligent robot.

Intelligent automation, including intelligent robots,

can now help, as described very well in this Springer

Handbook of Automation, not only with manufactur￾ing, supply and production companies, but increasingly

with security and emergency services; with healthcare

delivery and scientific exploration; with energy explo￾ration, production and delivery; and with a variety of

home and special needs human services. I am most

thankful for the efforts of all those who participated in

the development of this useful Springer Handbook of

Automation and contributed their expertise so that our

future with automation and robotics will continue to

bring prosperity.

Seiuemon Inaba

Oshino-mura, January 2009

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