Summary of What Is PID Control? | Understanding PID Control, Part 1

00:00:00 - 00:10:00

PID control is a control law used to generate an actuated signal that will result in a controlled variable. The controller determines the appropriate actuator command to reduce the error term in the system. This is illustrated with two examples: a plant controlled to walk to a specific goal line, and a controller used to keep a quadcopter drone hovering at a specific altitude.

• 00:00:00 PID control is a control law used to generate an actuated signal (input) that will result in a controlled variable (output). The controller determines the appropriate actuator command to reduce the error term in the system. This is illustrated with two examples. In the first example, a plant is controlled to walk to a specific goal line. In the second example, a controller is used to keep a quadcopter drone hovering at a specific altitude.
• 00:05:00 PID control is a method of controlling a machine's output to maintain a desired level of accuracy over time. In this video, we discuss how a proportional controller and an integrator path work together to create a system that eliminates steady-state error. When the drone is hovering at the desired altitude, the proportional path is doing nothing, while the integrator has been summing and subtracting values until it came to rest at 100 rpm. This proportional integral controller is it. This is what we want, something that understands the present and has memory of the past. However, the path the drone takes to get there might not be ideal, and we use changing error to determine when we are closing in on our goal. This prevents the drone from overshooting.
• 00:10:00 PID control is a versatile controller that uses the present error, the past error, and a prediction of the future error to calculate the appropriate actuator commands. Tuning the controller involves adjusting the game term in each branch.