AUTOMATION

Meaning of Automation
Automation may be described as the implementation of  process by automatic means. Again, it can further be described as the theory, art of technique of making a  process more automatic or the investigation, design, development and application of methods of rendering processes automatic, self-moving or self controlling.

Robotics
Robotics is a process whereby computer- controlled machines are used in industry to take the place of humans in doing repetitive and dangerous jobs.

Automatic Interrupts
Through a monitoring type system, the program may switched to another operation or it could be to another program due to a condition encountered during the processing. This feature allows the continued processing with a minimum amount of interruptions.

For a system to operate with maximum efficiency, it must be capable of redirecting its activities when prescribed or unusual conditions arise, situation which require an interruption of the program may be the result of a condition external to the system, in the input/output operation unit, or possibly in the central processing unit itself. Completion of an input/output operation or an entire job, unacceptable input data, program error, machine error, corrective action are some of the conditions that may result in an automatic interrupt.
 In order to maximize the amount of manual intervention, an automatic system was designed. The circuitry takes over the functions that were previously the job of the programmer. When  an interrupt takes place, the operation of the program in progress is suspended temporarily. The beauty of this is that the control status information needed to restart the program are automatically stored by the interrupt system itself.

An interrupt action causes an automatic branch to the control program. The current sequence of instructions are interrupted and an automatic branch occurs to a new set of instructions. The control program consists of the computer manufacturer's prepared programs as well as the user's application program plus of course various fix up and other corrective routines to which the machine id directed to branch after the interrupt.

TYPES OF AUTOMATIC INTERRUPTS
External Interrupts: Through an external interrupt, the system can respond to a signal from the interrupt key on the console, the built=in time, system, other processing units, terminals or special devices.

Input/Output Interrupts
The interrupt can be caused by the termination of an input/output operation, This is a signal to the processing unit that the input/output channel is free and ready to accept a new operation. Special conditions in the channel or in an input/output unit cause the processing unit to take appropriate action.

Supervisor Call Interrupt
This is a special instruction available to the programmer that can cause an interrupt. The most frequent use of a supervisor call interrupt is to switch from the problem state to the supervisory state.

Machine Check Interrupt
A machine check interrupt is caused by various types of machine errors and hardware malfunctions as detected by the machine checking circuit. Program errors such as invalid instructions or data cannot result in machine check interrupt. This interrupt initiates an automatic recording of the status of the system into special scan - out in main storage.

Some classes of interrupts may be ignored or held pending under program control. This postponement of the interrupt is called "masking" certain interrupts may be "masked" and kept pending until a later time. The system when executing instructions of the problem is said to be operating in the problems program state. Interrupts cause the circuitry in switch from the problem state to the supervisory state.

Program Interrupt
This interrupt may be caused by various kinds of programming errors and other unusual conditions such as incorrect operands, overflow, improper divide, improper address, attempted execution of an invalid instruction, etc, there are however, fifteen possible conditions that may cause this interrupt.