Evolutionary synthesis of dynamical systems: the past, current, and future

When Electronic Design Automation (EDA) has achieved great success both in academy and industry, design automation for mechanical systems seems to be lagged behind. One underlying reason for this is that the coupling of subsystems of mechanical systems is very strong, whereas this coupling for digital electronic system is usually much weaker. Or in other words, the modularity of electronic systems, especially digital electronic systems is much stronger. On the other hand, the mechatronic systems are becoming more and more modularized, which makes them more amenable to be designed automatically, just as digital electronic systems do. In this sense, Mechatronic Design Automation (MDA) is very likely to become the next wave after EDA both in academy and industry. In this paper, we give a survey of the topic of evolutionary synthesis of dynamical systems in general, and wish to shed some light on the future development of this subject.