ABSTRACT
It is commonly accepted that the multimedia applications that appeared in the mid-1990s are the third generationofcomputerapplications[P98].¥e¦rstgenerationwascharacterizedbyitsabilitytomanagedata,whilethesecondgenerationwasconsideredtobeprincipallyforcommunication.¥ishashad anin®uenceoncomputerinstructionsetarchitecture(ISA)incurrentprocessorswiththeintroduction ofmultimediaextensions(e.g.,MMXandSSEinIntel)orinthedevelopmentandde¦nitionofLANand WANnetworksthatwereabletoprovidequalityofservice(QoS)tothistra§c(suchasIEEE802.11e). ¥eareaofindustryhasnotbeenanexceptiontothisphenomenonand,fromthebeginning,thedevelopmentofnewindustrialapplications[P98,RSB99,WIF01]waspredictedbothforthehighdegreeof interactionbetweenhumanandindustrialprocessthattheyallowandfortheirpartinthedevelopments in monitoring and control, quality control, factory automation, and factory communication.Nowadays it is possible to ¦nd multimedia applications in nearly all areas of industrial communications-automation, monitoring, image processing, robotics, remote control, etc.
