The development of modern production and science and technology not only puts forward higher and higher requirements for automation technology, but also provides necessary conditions for the innovation of automation technology. After the 1970s, automation began to move towards complex system control and advanced control

And is widely used in various fields such as national defense, scientific research and economy to realize larger-scale automation, such as integrated automation system of large enterprises, national railway automatic dispatching system, automatic dispatching system of national power network, air traffic management system, urban traffic control system, automatic command system, national economic management system, etc. The application of automation is expanding from engineering field to non engineering field, such as medical automation, population control, economic management automation and so on. Automation will imitate human intelligence to a greater extent. Robots have been applied in the fields of industrial production, ocean development and space exploration. Expert systems have achieved remarkable results in medical diagnosis and geological exploration. Factory automation, office automation, home automation and agricultural automation will become important contents of the new technological revolution and develop rapidly.

The development trend of foreign automation technology is systematization, flexibility, integration and intelligence.

Automation technology continuously improves the technical level and market competitiveness of optoelectronics, automatic control system, traditional manufacturing and other industries. Its integration and innovation with optoelectronics, computer and information technology constantly creates and forms new industrial economic growth points, and constantly provides new management strategic philosophy for industrial development.

Such as concurrent engineering (CE), agile manufacturing (AM), etc. Numerical control technology applies to modularization, networking, multimedia and intelligence; CAD / CAM system faces the whole life cycle of products; The contents of automatic control include on-line monitoring and control of product quality, dynamic monitoring, diagnosis and accident handling of equipment operation status, monitoring of production status, coordinated control and chain protection between equipment, as well as plant level management decision-making and control; The system network is generally based on general computer network; Automation control products are developing in the direction of complete set, serialization and variety; The integrated system device integrating automatic control technology, data communication technology and image display technology has become the leading product of foreign industrial process control, and Fieldbus has become the first hotspot in the development of automatic control technology; The functions of programmable logic controller (PLC) and industrial control system (DCS) are getting closer and closer, and the price is getting closer and closer. Foreign leading manufacturers in the field of automatic control and instrumentation have launched products similar to PCs (process control system).

The world automation industry is developing rapidly. Automation technologies such as sensor technology, open industrial process automation system and fieldbus technology have formed a certain industrial scale. In the 1990s, the total market sales of sensors in the United States and Japan have exceeded US $10 billion.