Foreword

by George N. Saridis

Professor Emeritus

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Troy, New York

In the last 50 years, Automatic Control Theory has developed into a well-established engineering discipline that has found application in space technology, industry, household appliances and other technological implementations. It was designed to monitor and correct the performance of systems without the intervention of a human operator. Lately, with the growth of digital computers and the universal acceptance of systems theory, it was discovered and used in softer fields of human interest such as ecology, economics, biology, etc. In the meanwhile, being a dynamic discipline, Automatic Control with the aid of the digital computer has evolved from simple servomechanisms to an autonomous self-organizing decision-making methodology that was given the name of Intelligent Control. Several manifestations of Intelligent Control have been proposed by various scientists in the literature. Fuzzy, Neural, Hierarchical Intelligent, Cerebellar and Linguistic control systems are typical examples of such theoretically developed Intelligent Controls.

However, the application of such sophisticated methodologies to real life problems is far behind the theory. The areas with the highest need and the smallest tolerance for adopting the techniques resulting from such theoretical research are the industrial complexes. The main reason is the lack of suitable intelligent computational algorithms and interfaces designed especially for their needs. This book attempts to correct this by first presenting the theory and then developing various computational algorithms to be adapted for the various industrial applications that require Intelligent Control for efficient production.

The author, who was one of the first to actually implement Intelligent Control in industry, accomplishes this goal by developing step by step some of the most important Intelligent Computational Algorithms. His industrial experience, coupled with a strong academic background, has been channeled into creating a book that is suitable for graduate academic education and a manual for the practicing industrial engineer. Such a book fills a major gap in the global literature on Computational Intelligence and could serve as a text for the developing areas of biological, societal and ecological systems. I am very proud to introduce such an important work.