Plug&control

Abstract

One of the main reasons for the success of PID controllers in the industrial context is their relative ease of use. Indeed, the fast commissioning of the controller is essential in many applications, where a tight performance is not required, in order to reduce the implementation costs. In this context, the availability of the so-called Plug&Control function (i.e., to automatically make the controller work properly after simply connecting it in the control architecture, without further intervention from the operator) is highly desirable. With respect to the classic automatic tuning procedures, this function has the advantage that a dedicated identification (possibly time-consuming) experiment is not required, since the estimation of the process parameters is performed during the normal start-up of the process. This might allow a significant saving of time, energy, and material. A methodology related to this topic is described in this chapter, where only the case of IPDT processes is addressed.