Directions for research in systems and control engineering

Artificial intelligence, once regarded as a fringe activity by the control and systems engineering community, is set to play a crucial role in the development of future automated systems. The insights gained from previous work are already being incorporated within the specification of new systems, e.g. object-oriented programming. However, the author argues that much more fundamental changes in the way people perceive and design systems is afoot. This amounts to no less than a scientific evolution or paradigm shift, significantly extending the tools and methods available to the engineer. This shift can be classified into three main categories of development: extending the tools and methods for modelling and reasoning about (physical) systems; extending the range of automated tasks; and developing architectures for intelligent systems