FA(即工厂自动化)的发展,可以说是集中了过去三十多年自动化技术之大成。当初,人们仅着眼于大批量生产部件的加工自动化、单一化与专用计算机化。在那样的情况下,相对于某一特定位置的重复定位精度的提高与稳定便成为最主要的。后来,由于机床的NC(数字控制)化,使得在沿着任意的位置或者形状进行同样的重复加工的同时,还能够在短时间内可靠地变更其位置或者形状。当这样的灵活性满足了生产需要的时侯,人们便开始将自动化扩大到多品种、小批最的加工,并进而在这些方面采用 The development of FA (ie, factory automation) can be said to have focused on the culmination of automation technologies in the past three decades. At the beginning, people only focused on the automation of processing, mass production, and specialized computerization of mass-produced components. In that case, the accuracy and repeatability of repeated positioning relative to a particular location become the most important. Later, due to the NC (digital control) of the machine tool, it is possible to reliably change its position or shape in a short period of time while performing the same repetitive processing along arbitrary positions or shapes. When such flexibility meets the needs of production, people begin to extend automation to multi-species, small-batch processing, which in turn is used in these areas