Industrial automation is a general term for the measurement, manipulation and other information processing and process control of machinery and equipment or production processes according to the expected goals without direct human intervention . Automation technology is the exploration and research of methods and technologies for realizing automation processes. It is a comprehensive technology involving mechanical, microelectronics , computer, machine vision and other technical fields. The Industrial Revolution is the midwife of automation technology . It is precisely because of the needs of the Industrial Revolution that automation technology broke through the eggshell and flourished. At the same time, automation technology has also promoted industrial progress. Today, automation technology has been widely used in machinery manufacturing , electricity, construction, transportation , information technology and other fields, and has become the main means to improve labor productivity.

Industrial automation is one of the important prerequisites for Germany to launch Industry 4.0 , mainly in the fields of mechanical manufacturing and electrical engineering . The " embedded system " currently widely used in the German and international manufacturing industries is a special computer system designed for specific applications that completely embeds mechanical or electrical components into the controlled device . Statistics show that the market benefits of this "embedded system" are as high as 20 billion euros per year, and this figure will increase to 40 billion euros by 2020.