4.11 Conclusions

The case studies above show that, in principle, all of the desirable properties of smart structures enumerated in the introduction can be implemented in practice through the use of appropriate data fusion strategies, signal processing and computation. The main omission in the discussion is the role of active control in the establishing of smart systems. This was deliberate as any developments in active control for smart systems will arguably arise through mainstream research in that field, and in any case results can be found elsewhere in this book. Developments in optoelectronics and massively parallel computer architectures can only increase the possibilities in the future.