Modern production and the development of science and technology, automation technology ever-increasing demands, but also provided the necessary conditions for the innovation of automation technology. 1970s, automation began the development of complex system control and advanced intelligent control, and widely applied to national defense, scientific research and economic and other fields, more large-scale automation, such as large-scale enterprise integrated automation system, the national railway automatic scheduling system, the national electricity grid is automatic scheduling system, air traffic control systems, urban traffic control systems, automated command system, the national economy management system. Automation applications from the engineering field extended to the non-engineering fields such as medical automation, population control, economic management automation.

In the next few years, China's economy will be facing a transition, economic restructuring and energy saving are inseparable. Energy efficiency through automation. In addition, in the high-end equipment manufacturing, mainly in order to enhance the level of automation in order to achieve the purpose of energy saving. So the future of the automation market will see explosive growth. According to IMS Research Department of the related report released recently by the IHSInc. (NYSE: IHS), the forecast 2012 China and the U.S. market is relatively strong global industrial automation market can promote an increase of 9.5 percent, to $ 159.8 billion. The forecast for global steam flowmeter market to over $ 200 billion in 2015, the development of automation market has led to the development of the instrumentation industry.

Instrumentation industry "12th Five-Year" development planning ", 2015, the industry output value reached nearly one trillion yuan, an annual average growth rate of about 15%; exports more than 30 billion U.S. dollars, will mainly focus on major national projects, strategic emerging industries and the livelihood of the field needs to speed up the development of advanced automatic control system, the top three priorities of large precision test equipment, new instrumentation and sensors. Meanwhile, the basic completion of the autonomy of the typical equipment in the field of petrochemical, thermal power, nuclear power, wind power, rail traffic control system, and basically meet the needs of key areas to deal with environmental protection, food and drug safety, emergency public safety.

Development of automation technology trends is systematic, flexible, integrated and intelligent, based on this track, automation will show the following development trends: (1), Control Objectives for the stable operation of the development of process parameters to the highest quality indicators of optimal control. ② control method by simulation of feedback control the development of digital open-loop predictive control; by the traditional manual regulator, PID controller, and a variety of sequential control device, the development of a digital steam flow regulator and adaptive regulator.