The Roles of Information Technology in Systems Control

Abstract This report is intended to provide a perspective on the roles of recent information technology in systems control. In the first place, a brief historical sketch is presented on the use of computers from its infant stage to recent highly integrated total systems. It is pointed out that the areas of computer application have been spreading out from continuous processes to discrete systems where a wide variety of novel computer aided technologies are incorporated not only in the execution stage but also in the plan, design, evaluation and test stages of systems control. Various functions of information technology in systems control such as information acquisition, information transmission, information processing and information storage are then reviewed, together with their recent developments and foreseeable future prospects. Finally, image processing, machine diagnosis and knowledge engineering approaches are discussed as salient examples of the intensive use of information technology in systems control.