of the Task Force on Intelligent Control IEEE Control Systems Society

In May 1993, a task force was created at the invitation of the Technical Committee on Intelligent Control of the IEEE Control Systems Society to look into the area of Intelligent Control and de ne what is meant by the term. Its ndings are aimed mainly towards serving the needs of the Control Systems Society; hence the task force has not attempted to address the issue of intelligence in its generality, but instead has concentrated on deriving working characterizations of Intelligent Control. Many of the ndings however may apply to other disciplines as well. The charge to the task force was to characterize intelligent control systems, to be able to recognize them and distinguish them from conventional control systems; to clarify the role of control in intelligent systems; and to help identify problems where intelligent control methods appear to be the only viable avenues. In accomplishing these goals, the emphasis was on working de nitions and useful characterizations rather than aphorisms. It was accepted early on that more than one de nition of intelligent systems may be necessary, depending on the view taken and the problems addressed. In the remaining of this introduction, the di erent parts of this report are described and the process that led to this document is outlined. But rst, a brief introduction to the types of control problems the area of intelligent control is addressing is given and the relation between conventional and intelligent control is clari ed.