in 946, D., a mechanical engineer at Ford Motor Company in the United States S. Harde first proposed the term “automation” and used it to describe the process of automatic transmission and machining of engine cylinders. In the 1950s, the development of automatic regulators and classical control theory led automation into a local automation stage dominated by single variable automatic regulation systems. In the 1960s, with the emergence of modern control theory and the promotion and application of electronic computers, automatic control and information processing were combined, bringing automation into the comprehensive automation stage of optimal control and management in the production process.
In the 1970s, the object of automation became large-scale, complex engineering and non engineering systems, involving many problems that were difficult to solve with modern control theory. The study of these issues has promoted innovation in the theory, methods, and means of automation, leading to the emergence of large-scale system control and intelligent control of complex systems. Advanced automation systems that comprehensively utilize achievements in computer, communication technology, system engineering, and artificial intelligence have emerged, such as flexible manufacturing systems, office automation, intelligent robots, expert systems, decision support systems, computer integrated manufacturing systems, etc.
The emergence and application of automatic devices dates back to the 18th century. The formation period of automation technology was from the late 18th century to the 1930s. In 1788, British mechanic J. Watt invented the centrifugal governor (also known as the flyball governor) and connected it to the valve of the steam engine to form a closed-loop automatic control system for the speed of the steam engine. Watt’s invention opened a new era in the application of modern automatic control devices and had a significant impact on the development of the first industrial revolution and later control theory. People have started to use automatic adjustment devices to address control issues raised in industrial production. These regulators are devices that track given values, keeping some physical quantities near the given values. The application of automatic regulators marks a new historical period for automation technology. After entering the 20th century, various automatic regulating devices were widely used in industrial production, promoting the analysis and comprehensive research of regulating systems. Although feedback control structures were widely used in automatic regulators during this period, theoretical research on the principles of feedback control began in the 1920s. In 1833, British mathematician C. Babbage first proposed the principle of program control when designing analytical machines. In 1939, the world’s first group of professional research institutions on systems and control were established, which made theoretical and organizational preparations for the formation of classical control theory and the development of local automation in the 1940s.

The 1940s to 1950s were the period of local automation, and the classic control theory formed during the Second World War played an important role in promoting the development of local automation after the war. In the process of solving the problem, classical control theory was formed, and various precision automatic adjustment devices were designed, opening up a new scientific field of systems and control. This new discipline was called servo mechanism theory in the United States at the time and automatic adjustment theory in the Soviet Union, mainly aimed at solving single variable control problems. The name classical control theory was proposed at the first United States Joint Conference on Automatic Control in 1960. After 1945, due to the lifting of the wartime publishing ban, there were works that systematically expounded classical control theory. In 1945, American mathematician Wiener N. extended the concept of feedback to all control systems. After the 1950s, there were many new developments in classical control theory.. The methods of classical control theory can basically meet the needs of military technology during World War II and the needs of post-war industrial development. But by the late 1950s, it was discovered that applying the methods of classical control theory to multivariable systems would lead to incorrect conclusions. The methods of classical control theory have their limitations.
The invention of electronic digital computers in the mid-1940s ushered in a new era of digital program control. Although it was still limited to automatic computing at that time, the successful manufacturing of ENIAC and EDVAC opened up a new era of electronic digital program control. The invention of electronic digital computers laid the foundation for the widespread application of program control and logic control in control systems in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the widespread use of electronic digital computers to directly control production processes.
Since the late 1950s, it has been a period of comprehensive automation, during which space technology has developed rapidly and there is an urgent need to solve the optimal control problem of multivariable systems. So modern control theory was born. The formation and development of modern control theory have laid the theoretical foundation for comprehensive automation. At the same time, microelectronics technology has made new breakthroughs. Transistor computers emerged in 1958, integrated circuit computers emerged in 1965, and single-chip microprocessors emerged in 1971. The emergence of microprocessors has had a significant impact on control technology, and control engineers can easily use microprocessors to achieve various complex controls, making comprehensive automation a reality. “Automation” is an American D S. Harder proposed in 1936 that in a production process, the transfer of parts between machines does not require human handling, which is called “automation”.
On February 25, 2022, Hunan Huada Dana Intelligent Manufacturing Technology Co., Ltd. produced the first integrated automated nucleic acid testing laboratory in the province, which was launched in the eastern industrial park of Yiyang High tech Zone.