Adaptive and Robust Design for PID Controller Based on Ant System Algorithm

In this paper, a novel optimal design method for PID controller is proposed based on the ant system (AS) algorithm. In this method, for a given control system with a PID controller, by taking the overshoot, settling time, and steady-state error of unit step response of the system as the performance indexes and using the AS algorithm, the optimal PID controller parameters Kp*, Ti*, and Td* can be obtained. The proposed method has excellent features, including easy implementation, good convergence property, and efficient tuning of PID controller parameters. The PID controller designed using this method is called the AS-PID controller. In order to verify the good performance of the AS-PID controller, four typical control systems were tested. The simulation results show that the proposed method is indeed adaptive and robust in quick search of the optimal PID controller parameters.