The application of PID control in student projects

Abstract

This paper considers the different application of PID Controls. Specifically, we will take a look at how a group of students utilize this method in two different applications. Many of the Electrical Engineering students had a background in Mechatronics and Control Theory, which was beneficial in understanding the applications at hand. The first application included a robotic car. The students needed to direct the car to follow a predefined path. The second application included a robotic arm. The arm needed to reach a preset target within a specific time. PID control is a feedback control in which it calculates an error as the difference between the desired value and a measured value. It then applies a correction based on proportional, integral, and derivative terms. The PID controller objective is to reduce the error by the adjusting a variable, such as the position of a robot arm or Robot car. Some applications may require the use of only one variable: P, I, or D. This is achieved by setting the other parameters to zero. PID controller 6,7,8,9 can use two combinations of P, I, and D. It also can use the three terms to provide the appropriate system control. PI controllers are fairly common. A derivative action is sensitive to measurement noise, whereas the absence of an integral term may prevent the system from reaching its target value. In this paper, the result of the PID controllers in the student projects such as robotic car and robotic arm, will be analyzed. The results are based on the application of proportional, integral, and derivative control. In addition, a MATLAB and C++ programs will be used to calculate PID values. This paper suggests one possible method to implement the concepts that students have learned in the other courses, and use them in the real world applications. Robotic car and Robotic arm are two examples of the projects implemented in one of the courses in the Electronic Engineering Technology (EET) program called "Embedded Microprocessors System".