Automation and Control

The present edited book is a collection of 18 chapters written by internationally recognized experts and well-known professionals of the field. Chapters contribute to diverse facets of automation and control. The volume is organized in four parts according to the main subjects, regarding the recent advances in this field of engineering. The first thematic part of the book ¿is devoted to automation. This includes solving of assembly line balancing problem and design of software architecture for cognitive assembling in production systems. The second part of the book concerns different aspects of modelling and control. This includes a study on modelling pollutant emission of diesel engine, development of a PLC program obtained from DEVS model, control networks for digital home, automatic control of temperature and flow in heat exchanger, and non-linear analysis and design of phase locked loops. The third part addresses issues of parameter estimation and filter design, including methods for parameters estimation, control and design of the wave digital filters. The fourth part presents new results in the intelligent control. This includes building a neural PDF strategy for hydroelectric satation simulator, intelligent network system for process control, neural generalized predictive control for industrial processes, intelligent system for forecasting, diagnosis and decision making based on neural networks and self-organizing maps, development of a smart semantic middleware for the Internet , development of appropriate AI methods in fault-tollerant control, building expert system in rotary railcar dumpers, expert system for plant asset management, and building of a image retrieval system in heterogeneous database. ¿The content of this thematic book admirably reflects the complementary aspects of theory and practice which have taken place in the last years. Certainly, the content of this book will serve as a valuable overview of theoretical and practical methods in control and automation to those who deal with engineering and research in this field of activities.