In the last few years we have witnessed the emergence of autonomous and intelligent devices. Home appliances such as automated vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers, as well as delivery drones and self-driving cars, just to name a few, are examples of how smart systems are becoming a part of our daily lives [1]. Roughly speaking, a smart system is capable of collecting data through sensors and interacting with the environment by means of its actuators, in a way that emulates intelligent behavior.
Unlike industrial robots, which operate in a well-structured environment and perform repetitive tasks, smart systems have to cope with a high level of uncertainties and adjust their behavior according to both internal and external changes. Thus, although conventional control schemes have been successfully employed in a wide variety of robotic manipulators and other industrial applications, they may not represent the most suitable choice for systems subject to drastic changes in operating conditions [2]. On the other hand, because of their ability to undertake assignments in an environment of uncertainty and imperfect information, soft computing techniques, such as fuzzy logic and artificial neural networks, are commonly used when highly uncertain plants are to be considered.
However, while it may be the dominant paradigm, would the mere fusion of computational intelligence with modern control theory be enough to define the resulting control scheme as intelligent? Would an autonomous system equipped with such a controller be considered an intelligent agent? The answers to these questions depend on our understanding of what intelligence means.
[1] W. M. Bessa, G. Brinkmann, D. A. Duecker, E. Kreuzer, and E. Solowjow. A biologically inspired framework for the intelligent control of mechatronic systems and its application to a micro diving agent. Mathematical problems in engineering, 2018. [DOI]
[2] W. M. Bessa. Intelligent control of mechatronic systems. Breakfast coffee with a professor | Aamukahvit proffan johdolla, 2021. [Link]