Description
The field of industrial electronics covers a plethora of problems that must be solved in industrial practice. Electronic systems control many processes that begin with the control of relatively simple devices like electric motors, through more complicated devices such as robots, to the control of entire fabrication processes. An industrial electronics engineer deals with many physical phenomena as well as the sensors that are used tomeasure them.Thus, the knowledge required by this type of engineer is not only traditional electronics but also specialized electronics, for example, that required for high-power applications. The importance of electronic circuits extends well beyond their use as a final product in that they are also important building blocks in large systems, and thus the industrial electronics engineer must also possess knowledge of the areas of control and mechatronics. Since most fabrication processes are relatively complex, there is an inherent requirement for the use of communication systems that not only link the various elements of the industrial process but are also tailor-made for the specific industrial environment. Finally, the efficient control and supervision of factories require the application of intelligent systems in a hierarchical structure to address the needs of all components employed in the production process. This need is accomplished through the use of intelligent systems such as neural networks, fuzzy systems, and evolutionarymethods.The Industrial Electronics Handbook addresses all these issues and does so in five books outlined as follows:
1. Fundamentals of Industrial Electronics
2. Power Electronics and Motor Drives
3. Control and Mechatronics
4. Industrial Communication Systems
5. Intelligent Systems
The editors have gone to great lengths to ensure that this handbook is as current and up to date as possible. Thus, this book closely follows the current research and trends in applications that can be found in IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics. This journal is not only one of the largest engineering publications of its type in the world, but also one of the most respected. In all technical categories in which this journal is evaluated, it is ranked either number 1 or number 2 in the world. As a result, we believe that this handbook, which is written by the world’s leading researchers in the field, presents the global trends in the ubiquitous area commonly known as industrial electronics.
An interesting phenomenon that has accompanied the progression of our civilization is the systematic replacement of humans by machines. As far back as 200 years ago, human labor was replaced first by steam machines and later by electrical machines.Then approximately 20 years ago, clerical and secretarial jobs were largely replaced by personal computers. Technology has now reached the point where intelligent systems are replacing human intelligence in decision-making processes as well as aiding in the solution of very complex problems. In many cases, intelligent systems are already outperforming human activities.The field of computational intelligence has taken several directions. Artificial neural networks are not only capable of learning how to classify patterns, for example, images or sequences of events, but they can also effectivelymodel complex nonlinear systems.Their ability to classify sequences of events is probably more popular in industrial applications where there is an inherent need to model nonlinear system behavior—as an example, measuring the systemparameters that are easily obtainable and using a neural network to evaluate parameters that are difficult to measure but essential for system control. Fuzzy systems have a similar application.Their main advantage is their simplicity and ease of implementation. Various aspects of neural networks and fuzzy systems are covered in Parts II and III. Part IV is devoted to system optimization, where several new techniques including evolutionary methods, swarm, and ant colony optimizations are covered. Part V is devoted to several applications that deal with methods of computational intelligence.