A survey of distributed intelligence in automation in European industry, research and market

Over the last decade the automation industry has experienced a huge growth worldwide but the major automation markets are still in Europe and the USA with the highest absolute growth as some recently published studies show. In order to better determine the future technologies the European automation industry attempt to adopt in the next years, we conduced 2005 a trend study with the name "Trend Study for the Identification of Application Domains for Distributed Automation". Main propose of this survey was the identification of applications, key product and services requirements which can provide a basis for our future research issues in our core technology the distributed intelligent automation. The study has shown that the European automation industry has a big interest in distributed intelligence in automation technology particularly in the modular systems and machines applications and logistic system applications. But for the success of this technology following requirements should be fulfilled: (1) it has to lead to a major customer cost benefit and (2) advanced engineering tools are necessary to hide the complexity of distributed systems. In general this segment of European automation market waits for a sign from a global player.