Swarm-Based Design of Proportional Integral and Derivative Controllers Using a Compromise Cost Function: An Arduino Temperature Laboratory Case Study

Abstract

Simple and easy to use methods are of great practical demand in the design of Proportional, Integral, and Derivative (PID) controllers. Controller design criteria are to achieve a good set-point tracking and disturbance rejection with minimal actuator variation. Achieving satisfactory trade-offs between these performance criteria is not easily accomplished with classical tuning methods. A particle swarm optimization technique is proposed to design PID controllers. The design method minimizes a compromise cost function based on both the integral absolute error and control signal total variation criteria. The proposed technique is tested on an Arduino-based Temperature Control Laboratory (TCLab) and compared with the Grey Wolf Optimization algorithm. Both TCLab simulation and physical data show that satisfactory trade-offs between the performance and control effort are enabled with the proposed technique.