The Mihailo Pupin Institute’s efforts in the area of automation and control have been in progress for nearly six decades. Ever since the Institute’s foundation its specialists have dealt with both theoretical and practical automatic control issues, placing particular emphasis on hardware and software development.

Theoretical studies in automation and control have focussed on the methods, procedures and algorithms of system control in the widest sense of the word – covering technical systems, large organizations, complete industrial sectors and governmental bodies. Special attention has been given to hierarchically organized industrial systems such as electric power industry, water resource management, railway traffic and transportation, and other large industrial organizations. Operations research and systems analysis methods, developed originally by the Institute’s experts, have been widely used in designing control systems of the mentioned organizations.

Development efforts have mostly been motivated by the need to respond timely to the ever faster changes in VLSI area. As a result, numerous new or upgraded versions of automation & control equipment have been offered to the market. In addition, the dramatic development of computer technologies, with PC technology as a milestone, has essentially changed the approach to centralized system control. This is why rigid, fully centralized systems are being replaced by our distributed automatic control systems. As far as software is concerned, our control systems rely evermore on commercially available software tools that allow much more efficient software development and integration of control algorithms and methods.

Fruit borne by our R&D efforts in automation and control area includes a wide range of hardware and software products. We mention here some of them: process control computers (ATLAS Family), SCADA software (VIEW6000, VIEW2), DMS/EMS applications, measurement equipment and converters for electric/nonelectric quantities, expert systems and decision support systems.