Power electronics-recent advances and future perspective

In the history of industrial civilization, we have come a long way since the first industrial revolution when James Watt invented the steam engine to replace the muscle power by mechanical power. The invention of electrical machines and industrial application of electricity around one hundred years ago marked a significant milestone in this evolutionary process. Gradually, the advent of solid state semiconductor devices, power electronics, microelectronics, computers and computer-aided engineering techniques brought us well ahead in the midst of a modern industrial revolution. The paper highlights technological advances in power electronics and motion control and gives a brief perspective of the future. Particularly, it reviews a few selected applications from the recent literature