The development of modern production and science and technology puts forward higher and higher requirements for automation technology, and also provides necessary conditions for the innovation of automation technology.

After the 1970s, automation began to develop into complex system control and advanced intelligent control, and was widely used in national defense, scientific research and economy, etc., to realize larger-scale automation, such as comprehensive automation system of large enterprises, national railway automatic dispatching system, national power grid automatic dispatching system, air traffic control system, urban traffic control system, automatic command system and national economic management system.

The application of automation is expanding from engineering to non-engineering fields, such as medical automation, population control and economic management automation. Automation will imitate human intelligence to a greater extent. Robots have been applied in industrial production, ocean development and space exploration, and expert systems have achieved remarkable results in medical diagnosis and geological exploration. Factory automation, office automation, home automation and agricultural automation will become the important contents of the new technological revolution and develop rapidly.