Simple Tuning of Arbitrary Controllers using Governors

Abstract

The paper proposes a preliminary idea to an intuitive and straightforward mechanism for tuning arbitrary controllers and changing the closed-loop performance. While the structure and parameters of the original controller are kept unchanged, the inputs to the nominal controller are modified such that the closed-loop response becomes slower or faster. Such a governor setup implementation is advantageous, especially when re-tuning the original controller is impractical or impossible. The practicability and versatility of this approach is presented using several examples spanning from simple loops with PID controllers to complex nonlinear closed-loop systems with optimal and approximated explicit MPC.