This book is an outcome of a 2-days Workshop on Automation Engineering
held in Salzhausen (near Hamburg), F.R. Germany. The Workshop is
annually organ- ized by the Institute of Automation Technology and the
Institute of Applied and Physical Chemistry of the University of Bremen.
It is regularly joined by 30 to 40 participants representing the
teaching and reserarch staff of both Institutes, as weIl as some invited
colleagues from other universities and the regional industry. Usually
15/20 selected contributions, grouped in technical sessions (system
modelling and identification, control systems design, computer hardware
and soft- ware, knowledge-based systems, robotics etc.), are presented
at the Workshop, whereby the invited guests preferably present survey
papers on current problems of modern systems engineering. For this book,
22 papers, contributed to the last two Workshops, are selected and
grouped into 6 Chapters. The Chapters reflect the technical sessions
listed above and give an average view on current research activities at
both Institutes of the University. It is expected that the book will
prove as a useful reference to the scientists and practicing engineers
in the area of devel- opment and application of methods of modern
systems engineering in processing industry and the robotics.