Towards intelligent PID control

Abstract

Auto-tuners for PID controllers have now been commercially available for a few years. These controllers are automating the task normally performed by an instrument engineer. The auto-tuners include some technique for extracting process dynamics from experiments and some control design method. They may even be able to select to use PI or PID control. For a higher degree of automation it is desirable to also automate tasks normally performed by process engineers. To do so it is necessary to provide the controllers with reasoning capability. This seems technically feasible with the increased computing power that is now available in single loop controllers. This paper describes a PID controller with such reasoning capabilities. © 1990.