PID Control Tutorial Presented by Team 2168

Technical Programming
1

Hello all,

I am the Control System Engineering for Team 2168 the Aluminum Falcons, out of Groton, CT.

During the off-season of 2011 our team took a self challenge to create informative tutorials which allowed us to share the knowledge we have gained during the years of our growth with other teams.

I have been working on a complete video walk through to show a simple way to tune the gains of a PID controller using Matlab and Simulink; using methods & tools which align more with how industry designs controllers and doesn’t involve guess and check.

All the videos are not up yet, but the most important one is, the video which shows how to tune the gains. The video, m-files, .mdl files, and complete labview project are also available from our team website at:

http://team2168.org/index.php/resources/programming/217-pid-control-tutorial

The custom PID controller I use is also provided to be used by any team who so desires, all I ask is that you give credit to us if you do use it and let us know how it has worked for you. Even though the files are provided in labview, I will soon (couple of days) also provide a Java implementation.

The example in the video covers tuning position control gains but it is easy to extend the method for speed control on your own. In the next few days I will be posting an official walk through for tuning speed control gains as well.

Please check it out and post any feedback you may have on the website or the youtube video.

-Kevin

2

Thanks for this! I thought I was going to have a really tough time implementing PID, but with your comprehensive tutorials, I think it’ll be less of a nightmare!

Do you have an ETA on the rest of the videos?

3

No problem, thanks for the positive feedback. I’m trying as hard as I can to get most of the videos up by this weekend. So please check back soon.

You can expect a speed control tutorial, and PID control implemented in Java.

I also started tooling around with the PID control on the Jag last night, so I’ll try to throw something together on that as well, if I have the time.

-Kevin

4

Thanks man, these look like they’ll be really helpful! I just got through a controls course and would love to try to implement some of it.

5

Very cool!

6

Now, you said we need MathLab and Simulink? What version of Simulink do we need?

7

simulink 2009 or greater, with the control system tool box… open matlab and type ver to see what you have installed.