ISA Transactions 52 (2013) 429–437

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Practice Article

Design, implementation and application of distributed order PI control

Fengyu Zhou a, Yang Zhao a, Yan Li a,n, YangQuan Chen b
a
Service Robot Laboratory of Shandong University, School of Control Science and Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan 250061, Shandong, PR China
b
Mechatronics, Embedded Systems and Automation (MESA) Lab, School of Engineering, University of California, Merced, 5200 North Lake Road, Merced,
CA 95343, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o abstract

Article history: In this paper, a series of distributed order PI controller design methods are derived and applied to the
Received 7 September 2012 robust control of wheeled service robots, which can tolerate more structural and parametric
Accepted 15 December 2012 uncertainties than the corresponding fractional order PI control. A practical discrete incremental
Available online 23 January 2013
distributed order PI control strategy is proposed basing on the discretization method and the frequency
This paper was recommended for publica-
criterions, which can be commonly used in many fields of fractional order system, control and signal
tion by Dr. Mohammad Haeri.
processing. Besides, an auto-tuning strategy and the genetic algorithm are applied to the distributed
Keywords: order PI control as well. A number of experimental results are provided to show the advantages and
Distributed order distinguished features of the discussed methods in fairways.
Incremental distributed order controller & 2012 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Auto-tuning
Genetic algorithm
Fractional calculus

1. Introduction calculus [35,37,41,42], and so on [7,43]. Moreover, there are also

The idea of distributed order operator was first proposed by
Michele Caputo in 1969 [1], which is emerged from the following
two conditions. First, the interior of the physical domain can be
modeled by a fractional order dynamic relationship. On the other
hand, the fractional order may vary continuously within the
domain. Caputo and others [2] came up with a distributed order
equation regarding the constitutive equation of diffusions in
dielectric media and distributed order filters [3]. Moreover, the
existence of the order domain and the solution of distributed
order equations were shown in [3–5]. In 2002, the authors of [6]
discussed the variable and distributed operators. The distributed
order fractional kinetics was suggested in [7]. And many other
distributed order physics are presented including distributed
order viscoelastic materials [6,8–10], diffusion [11–14], complex
systems [15,16] and system identification [17–21], etc. Some
other papers are shown as the basic analysis of distributed order
calculus such as the time domain analysis of distributed order
operators [10,13,22–24], distributed order [25,26], the numerical
methods of the distributed order [27–32] and some of their
applications [23,33–37].
The application of distributed order operator to control systems
is still a developing field. Some relative results can be classified as:
distributed order systems [2,3,25,26,38], distributed order system
identification [17,18,39,40], special functions in distributed order
n
Corresponding author. Tel.: þ86 531 88399867.
E-mail address: liyan.sdu@gmail.com (Y. Li).
three surveys [6,44,45] and three thesis [31,34,46] discussing the
theories and applications of the distributed operators. It can be seen
that both integer and fractional order systems are special cases of
distributed order systems [6]. Particularly, the distributed order
operator becomes a more precise tool to explain and describe some
real physical phenomena such as the complexity of nonlinear
systems [6,17–19,25,26,30,39,42,45,47], networked structures
[6,48,49], nonhomogeneous [27–29,35,40,43,44], multi-scale and
multi-spectral phenomena [7,31,34,36,37,46], etc.
It can be seen from the current references that the distributed
order operator plays an intermediate role between integer order
and fractional order operators [22]. Besides, it also shows some
distinctive characteristics than any other fractional order ones
[6,22,50,51]. Thus it not only inherits the advantages of fractional
order methods but also exhibits many unique properties so that
the theory and applications of distributed order operators have
become the hot spot in various fields [6]. Nevertheless, the
discussions on distributed order control systems are still unmature,
and the theory, technique and other relative fields are urgently
needed to be developed. Particularly, the combinations of DO
operators and the intelligent control strategies, such as genetic
algorithm and iterative learning control, etc, are still open pro-
blems that draw many potential attentions from various applica-
tions [52–56]. Therefore, motivated by the previous works and the
applications of the distributed order calculus to the robust motion
control of wheeled service robot, a series of practical distributed
order robust control strategies are presented in this paper, which is
divided into the following parts. Some mathematical preliminaries
are introduced in Section 2. In Section 3, the time domain analysis

0019-0578/$ - see front matter & 2012 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isatra.2012.12.004
430 F. Zhou et al. / ISA Transactions 52 (2013) 429–437

is derived, which will be used in the following sections. In Sections connecting the branch points along the negative real domain so
4 and 5, a robust DOPI controller design method is discussed, that the path integral in (3) is equivalent to the path integral
which is leading to the applications of intelligent control methods along the Hankel path.1 The Hankel path starts from 1 along
and the experimental results in Section 6. The conclusions are the lower side of real (horizontal) axis, encircles the circular disc
shown in Section 7. 9s9 ¼ E-0, in the positive sense and ends at 1 along the upper
side of real axis.
Moreover, it can be also proved that the path integral of
2. Preliminaries ðest ðsb sa ÞÞ=lnðsÞ along s-0 equals zero for a Z1 and there are
no poles in the single value analytical plane. Therefore, by
2.1. Fractional calculus substituting s ¼ xeip and s ¼ xeip , where x A ð0, þ1Þ, we have,
for an arbitrary s 4 0 and br 1
Fractional calculus plays an important role in modern science (Z ) Z s þ i1 st b a
b
[57–60]. Allowing for the potential applications of this paper and 1 e ðs s Þ
L1 s a da ¼ ds
the fractional calculus, we introduce the Riemann–Liouville frac- a 2pi si1 lnðsÞ
tional operator [57]. The definition of Riemann–Liouville frac- Z 1 xt b api a bpi
1 e ðx e x e Þ
tional integral is shown in the following equation: ¼ dx
2pi 0 lnðxÞip
Z t Z 1 xt b bpi a api
at 0 1 f ðtÞ 1 e ðx e x e Þ
t0 Dt f ðtÞ ¼ dt , ð1Þ  dx
GðaÞ t0 ðttÞ1a 2pi 0 lnðxÞ þ ip
Z 1 xt
where a A ð0,1Þ, f(t) is an arbitrary integrable function, t0 D at 0
is 1 e
t ¼ fxb ½p cosðbpÞsinðbpÞlnðxÞ
the fractional integral of order a on ½t 0 ,t, and GðÞ denotes the p 0 ðlnðxÞÞ2 þ p2
Gamma function [57,61–64]. The Laplace transform of 0 D a
t f ðtÞ is
xa ½pcosðapÞsinðapÞlnðxÞgdx: ð4Þ
a
ð1=s ÞFðsÞ, where FðsÞ ¼ Lff ðtÞg. For an arbitrary real number p, the
Based on the above discussions, we arrive at the following
Riemann–Liouville fractional derivative is defined as
theorem.
½p þ 1
pt 0 d þ 1Þt0
t0 Dt f ðtÞ ¼ ½t0 Dð½pp
t f ðtÞ, Theorem 1. For any 1 r a ob r 0, we have
dt ½p þ 1 (Z )
b Z
where ½p stands for the integer part of p, and D denotes the 1 1 ext
L1 s a da ¼ fxb ½p cosðbpÞsinðbpÞlnðxÞ
Riemann–Liouville fractional operator. Some geometric and phy- a p 0 ðlnðxÞÞ2 þ p2
sical interpretations of fractional order integration and differen- xa ½p cosðapÞsinðapÞlnðxÞg dx:
tiation were suggested in [65,66].
Moreover
(Z ) !
b
2.2. Distributed order integrator 1 M1 t ðb þ 1Þ M 2 t ða þ 1Þ
0 rL 1
sa da r þ , ð5Þ
a p2 9b þ 19 9a þ 19
Motivated by the previous references and the applications of
the distributed operators to control, filtering and signal processing, where M1 and M2 are finite positive constants.
a distributed order integrator is derived step by step in this paper.
Proof. The first equation in this theorem is the same with (4).
First, the classical integrator can be rewritten as:
R1 Moreover, by using (4), it can be easily proved that
ð1=sÞ ¼ 1 dða þ 1Þsa da, where dðÞ denotes the Dirac–Delta func- (Z ) Z 1
tion and sa is called the fractional order integrator if a A ð1,0Þ. b
1
0 rL1 sa da r 2 ext ðxb þ xa Þ dx
Moreover, the summation of a series of fractional order integrators a p 0
P R1 P
ak a !
can be expressed as: k ð1=s Þ ¼ 1 ½ k dða þ ak Þs da, where k
1 M 1 t ðb þ 1Þ M 2 t ða þ 1Þ
belongs to any countable or non-countable set. It is straightforward ¼ 2 þ ,
P p 9bþ 19 9a þ 19
to replace k dða þ ak Þ by a weighted kernel wðRb
aÞ. It follows that
the right side of the above equation becomes a wðaÞsa da, where R1 1=ð1 þ bÞ R1 1=ð1 þ aÞ
where M 1 ¼ 0 et dt and M2 ¼ 0 et dt are finite
wðaÞ is independent of time and the above equation defines a positive constants for any 1r a o br 0 [22]. &
distributed order integrator as 1r a o br 0 [67]. Some other
discussions can be found in [6,22]. Based on the above discussions we can get the time domain
expression of the distributed order integrator for any
1r a o b r0. Note here, for 1 r a ob r 0, (4) can be easily
3. Time domain analysis of distributed order integrator computed by using ‘‘quadgk’’ in MATLAB which will be used in the
discretization method.
The unified distributed order integrator is discussed in this
paper, which plays a fundamental role in the following sections
and the generalized distributed order integrators. For the unified 4. A robust design of distributed order PI controller
distributed order integrator (DOI)
Z b Allow for the applications of distributed order PI (DOPI)
sb sa
sa da ¼ , ð2Þ controller to the wheeled service robot, a robust design method
a lnðsÞ
is presented in the following part of this section, which can
where 1r a o br 0 are arbitrary real numbers, its inverse efficiently reduce the influences of parametric and structural
Laplace transform is written as uncertainties and unknown disturbances.
(Z ) Z s þ i1 The general model of a DC motor used in the wheeled robot is
b
1 sb sa
L1 sa da ¼ est ds, ð3Þ depicted in Fig. 1. The relations for the armature controlled DC
a 2pi si1 lnðsÞ

where s 40. It can be seen that there are two branch points of (2), 1
It follows from the residue of ðest ðsb sa ÞÞ=lnðsÞ equals zero at s ¼ 1 that the
s¼0 and s ¼ 1. Therefore, we can cut the complex plane by path integral of it along s-1 is vanished for a Z 1.
 F. Zhou et al. / ISA Transactions 52 (2013) 429–437 431

8  
>
> Ap
>
> K i B ln o 
R >
> 2
>
> arg½CðjoÞ ¼  ,
L >
> p 2
Bp
>
> ln
2
o þ þ K A ln o þ
>
< 4 i
2
Va vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
3 ffi
u2 32 2 
>
>
> u Ap 2
>
> u K B ln o
> 9CðjoÞ9 ¼ K u
> 6 7 6 i 2 7
>
> pu
61 þ K i ðA ln oÞ 7 þ 6 7 ,
Vemf >
> t 4 p 2 5 4 p 2 5
>
> ln
2
o þ ln
2
o þ
:
4 4

Fig. 1. The general model of a DC motor. where

bp ap
A ¼ ob cos oa cos
2 2
Td ( s ) and

( s) ( s) bp ap
Va ( s ) Km 1 1 B ¼ ob sin oa sin :
2 2
Ls R Js K f s
Let the open loop transfer function be
LðjoÞ ¼ CðjoÞGðjoÞ,
the design of the robust DOPI controller will satisfy
Kb 8
Vemf ( s ) > arg½LðjoÞ9o ¼ ocg ¼ p þ fm ,
>
> 
<
darg½LðjoÞ
do  ¼ 0, ð9Þ
Fig. 2. The mathematical model of a DC motor. > o ¼ ocg
>
>
: 9Lðjocg Þ9 ¼ 1,

where p=6 r fm r p=3, ocg is the gain crossover frequency, and

motor are shown schematically in Fig. 2. The transfer function of
the middle equation of (9) grantees the robustness to the system
such a DC motor has the following form [68]:
uncertainties.
yðsÞ Km It follows from (9) that
GDCM ðsÞ ¼ ¼ , ð6Þ
V a ðsÞ s½ðLs þ RÞðJs þ K f Þ þ K b K m   p  p2

fm  þarctanðotÞ ln2 o þ
where L,R and J are, respectively, the armature inductance, 2 4
Ki ¼
Ap  p  Bp
, ð10Þ
armature resistance and rotor inertia, and Kf and Km are the
B lnðoÞ  fm  þ arctanðotÞ A ln o þ
constants related to the magnetic flux. Particularly, in many cases, 2 2 2
the time constant of the armature is negligible so that (6)
becomes PK 2i þ QK i þ tC 2 ¼ 0, ð11Þ

Km ½K m =ðRK f þ K b K m Þ K oD
GDCM ðsÞ ¼ ¼ ¼ , Kp ¼ s
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
s½RðJs þ K f Þ þ K b K m  sðts þ 1Þ sðts þ 1Þ 2  2 , ð12Þ
K i ðA ln o þBp=2Þ K i ðB lnoA=2Þ
ð7Þ Kg 1þ þ
C C
where the time constant t ¼ RJ=ðRK f þ K b K m Þ and K ¼ K m =ðRK f
where
þK b K m Þ.
In the experiments of this paper, the model of the DC motor is2 2 p2
C ¼ ln o þ , D ¼ 1 þðotÞ2 ,
4 !
0:685  
GðsÞ ¼ , ð8Þ Bp 2 2
2 2
_ ln2 o þ B A p ,
sð0:00349s þ 1Þ P ¼ t A ln o þ þ D AB_ ln oAB
2 2o
and let the DOPI controller be    
Bp B p
  Q ¼ 2tC A ln o þ þ CD B_ ln o þ  A_
sb sa 2 o 2
CðsÞ ¼ K p 1 þ K i ,  
ln s 2 ln o Ap
D B ln o ,
o 2
where 1 ra ob r0 and K p ,K i are positive constants. It follows
that, in the frequency domain where n_ denotes the first-order derivative to o. Fix a or b, and
8 p given arbitrary p=6 r fm r p=3 and ocg 4 0, the constants b or a,
>
> arg½GðjoÞ ¼ arctanðotÞ , Ki and Kp can be solved using graphical methods, which guaran-
>
< 2
Kg tees the response time and robustness simultaneously.
GðjoÞ ¼ , Kg
sðts þ1Þ >
> 9Gðjo Þ9 ¼ q ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
>
: o 1þ ðotÞ2
5. The implementation of discrete incremental distributed
and order PI controller
!
ðjoÞb ðjoÞa
CðjoÞ ¼ K p 1 þ K i , Allow for the application of DOPI controller to the intelligent
lnðjoÞ
control of service robots, the following two items are required in
this paper: the discretization of the distributed order integrator
2
It should be noted that the discussed robust design method is actually
and the design of incremental DOPI controllers. To this aim, the
available for many integer order and fractional order models. Refs. [69–71] are impulse response invariant discretization method will be applied,
cited in here to extend the knowledge. which converts the analog filter transfer functions to digital filter
432 F. Zhou et al. / ISA Transactions 52 (2013) 429–437
transfer functions in such a way that the impulse response is the
same (invariant) at the sampling instants. Thus, if g(t) denotes the
impulse-response of an analog (continuous-time) filter, then the
digital (discrete-time) filter given by the impulse-invariant
method will have impulse response gðnT s Þ, where Ts denotes the
sampling period in seconds. Moreover, the digital filter’s fre-
quency response is an aliased version of the analog filter’s
frequency response [33,72].
It should be noted that the impulse invariance-based IIR-type
discretization method is a simple and efficient numerical dis-
cretization method for the approximation of distributed order
filter [73–76]. The method can not only accurately approximate
the distributed order filters in time domain but also fit the
frequency response in certain intervals.
For example, based on the time domain analysis and the above
discretization method, the DOPI controller
 
s0:6302 s1
CðsÞ ¼ K p 1 þ K i
ln s
can be rewritten into the following discrete form [77]:
Cðz1 Þ ¼ K p ½1þ K i  DOIðz1 Þ,
where the discretization order is 3, and
0:0013730:00287z1 þ 0:001701z2 0:0002038z3
DOIðz1 Þ ¼ : two reasons. First, the order a is corresponding to the energy
12:882z1 þ 2:765z2 0:8833z3
ð14Þ
Besides, it follows from (13) that the discrete incremental DOPI
controller can be expressed as
DUðkÞ ¼ 1:882Uðk1Þ2:765Uðk2Þ þ 0:8833Uðk3Þ
þGðK p ,K i ,eðmÞÞ,
where DUðkÞ ¼ UðkÞUðk1Þ, U i ¼ 0 for i r 0, m ¼ fk,k1,k2,k3g
and
GðK p ,K i ,eðmÞÞ ¼ K p ½ð1 þ 0:001373K i ÞeðkÞð2:882 þ 0:00287K i Þeðk1Þ
þð2:765 þ 0:001701K i Þeðk2Þ
ð0:8833þ 0:0002038K i Þeðk3Þ:
Remark 1. The classical continuous incremental PID design
method does not work for both fractional order and distributed
order PID cases due to the heredity of the fractional order or
distributed order operators (infinite dimensional realization).
Fig. 3. The time and frequency plots of ðs0:6302 s1 Þ=ln s and DOIðz1 Þ in (14).
Thus the discrete incremental algorithm is applied, which can
be widely used in fractional filtering, control and signal proces-
sing. Most of the tuning and auto-tuning methods can be directly
applied to the above incremental DOPI control strategy. More-
over, the continuous and discrete DO operators ðs0:6302 s1 Þ=ln s
and DOIðz1 Þ are compared in Fig. 3. The impulse response
invariant discretization method works well for the band-limited
(0:9600 Hz) continuous-time distributed order filters. This fig-
ure is plotted by [77] using ½sr ¼ irid_doið0:001,0:6302,1,3,3Þ. And
the better fitting results can be achieved with higher discretiza-
tion order, but the higher order cases ( 4 5) may bring about
obvious vibrations in experiments.
6. Experimental results and analysis
In this paper, the experiments are worked on the Pioneer P3-
DX wheeled robot. And all the control strategies are verified in
Bode plots and MATLAB/SIMULATIONS before the experiments.
The corresponding DOPI and FOPI controllers are designed by
using the same method in (9) so that the DO and FO results can be
ð13Þ
fairly compared with real data. Moreover, it should be noted that
the above mentioned parameter a can be arbitrarily chosen in
½1,bÞ theoretically. However, in reality, a ¼ 1 is assumed for
dispersion [78] of the distributed order element, which is smaller
as a-1. On the other hand, we tried hundreds of a and b in
simulations and experiments. It is shown that a ¼ 1 perfor-
mances better than other distributed order cases.
ð15Þ
6.1. The robust distributed order PI control
In this subsection, several experiments are shown to validate
the conclusions of Section 4, and the fractional order PI (FOPI)
controllers [79] are designed by using the same method in (9) so
ð16Þ that the DOPI and FOPI controllers can be fairly compared.
Let a ¼ 1, ocg ¼ 90 Hz and fm ¼ p=3, it can be derived by
using (9) that b ¼ 0:6302, Kp ¼129.0811 and Ki ¼24.59, i.e.
Z !
0:6302
C do ðsÞ ¼ 129:0811 1þ 24:59 sa da :
1
 F. Zhou et al. / ISA Transactions 52 (2013) 429–437 433

By using the same method of (9), the corresponding FOPI is Let a ¼ 1, ocg ¼ 200 Hz and fm ¼ p=6, it can be derived by
0:9962
using (9) that b ¼ 0:8282, Kp ¼370.4929 and Ki ¼340.6184, i.e.
C fo ðsÞ ¼ 89:7530ð1 þ19:4697s Þ: !
Z 0:8282
The open loop transfer functions GðsÞC do ðsÞ and GðsÞC fo ðsÞ are C do ðsÞ ¼ 370:4929 1 þ340:6184 sa da :
1
shown in Fig. 4. It follows from (13) to (16) that
The corresponding FOPI is
DU do ðkÞ ¼ 1:882Uðk1Þ2:766Uðk2Þ þ 0:8834Uðk3Þ
þ 133:4296eðkÞ381:121  eðk1Þ þ362:44eðk2Þ C fo ðsÞ ¼ 203:3457ð1 þ85:769s0:9954 Þ:

114:678eðk3Þ, The open loop transfer functions GðsÞC do ðsÞ and GðsÞC fo ðsÞ are
shown in Fig. 6. It can be proved that
DU fo ðkÞ ¼ 1:929Uðk1Þ2:859Uðk2Þ þ 0:9297Uðk3Þ DU do ðkÞ ¼ 1:911Uðk1Þ2:824Uðk2Þ
þ 91:54eðkÞ266:348  eðk1Þ þ 258:28eðk2Þ þ 0:9121Uðk3Þ þ 407:8597eðkÞ1153:76
eðk1Þ þ1087:07eðk2Þ340:8329eðk3Þ,
83:449eðk3Þ,

where eðÞ denotes the output error. The above two control DU fo ðkÞ ¼ 1:929Uðk1Þ2:859Uðk2Þ
strategies can be called as the discrete incremental DOPI and þ 0:9296Uðk3Þ þ 221:3097eðkÞ630:324
FOPI controllers, respectively. Their experimental results are
eðk1Þ þ598:22eðk2Þ189:102eðk3Þ:
illustrated in Fig. 5. The blue and red lines denote, respectively,
the speed outputs of DOPI and FOPI controllers. The illustrated experimental results are shown in Fig. 7.

Fig. 4. The bode plots of the distributed order and fractional order open loop transfer functions, where a ¼ 1, ocg ¼ 90 Hz and fm ¼ p=3.

electric motor v−t figure

450

400

350

300
v (mm/s)

250
Distributed Order Controller
Fractional Order Controller
Vg datum speed
200

150

100

50

0
0 5 10 15 20
t (s)

Fig. 5. The experimental data of the wheeled service robot, where a ¼ 1, ocg ¼ 90 Hz and fm ¼ p=3. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the
reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
434 F. Zhou et al. / ISA Transactions 52 (2013) 429–437

Fig. 6. The bode plots of the distributed order and fractional order open loop transfer functions, where a ¼ 1, ocg ¼ 200 Hz and fm ¼ p=6.

Remark 2. It can be seen from Figs. 4 and 6 that the distributed
order phase curves are wider than the corresponding fractional
order ones. It implies that, under the same circumstance, the DOPI
controller is more robust to the system uncertainties [80], such as
load change, model error and vibration, etc. The output speeds of
DOPI controllers are always faster and smoother than the corre-
sponding FOPI cases, which are illustrated in Figs. 5 and 7. Besides,
the increase of ocg can improve the tracking speed, and the effects
are more obvious in DOPI cases. Moreover, the overshoots of the
system output are very small because only the sign of DUðkÞ is
applied to drive the motor, which improves the stability and safety
of the wheeled service robot. Moreover, if necessary, Kp and Ki can
be easily adjusted in real experiments so that many other intelligent
 The incremental DOPI controller can be designed by using the
same procedures of Section 4. And the switch can be triggered
at any time after that.
Remark 3. Theoretically, a~ can be an arbitrary positive constant.
~ 2
However, it should be noted that, in this paper, apT so that a~
cannot be too large and too small. In this paper, a~ ¼ 50 is
assumed. For example, let a~ ¼ 50 and the real system model be
PðsÞ ¼ 0:685=ðsð0:00349s þ1ÞÞ, by increasing b~ from 0 to 418.6, the
system reaches the boundary stable state (Fig. 9), where the
period is T ¼2.642. It follows from (17) that

control methods can be applied as well.

t ¼ 0:0034917  0:00349,
K ¼ 0:68455  0:685:

6.2. An auto-tuning criterion of DOPI control Moreover, because a~ is an arbitrary positive constant, i.e. the low-
pass filter is fixed in advance, either a digital or an analog low-
In this subsection, an auto-tuning strategy is applied to the DOPI pass filter is available in here.
control of the wheeled service robot (Fig. 8), which consists of the
system identification and the robust DOPI controller design. For the Remark 4. Allow for the applications of the above DOPI method,
~ þ1Þ and a constant gain
system identification, a low-pass filter 1=ðas two points should be emphasized in the above procedures. First,
b~ are arranged in series, which can be tuned to achieve the it can be seen from the previous sections that the DOPI controller
parameters of the DC motor model K=ðsðts þ 1ÞÞ. Thus the transfer can tolerate more uncertainties than FOPI controllers, which
function of the closed loop system can be expressed as implies that a relatively better performance can be expected from
DOPI controls even with certain model errors. On the other hand,
~
bGðsÞPðsÞ ~
bK
¼ : most of the identification methods can be cascaded in the auto-
~
1 þ bGðsÞPðsÞ 3 ~
a~ ts þ ða~ þ tÞs2 þs þ bK tuning criterion, and the approximated model can be directly
substituted into (9) so that the Kp, Ki and b for the DOPI controller
It can be easily verified that the boundary stable condition of the
can be arrived as well. For example, given a first-order plus time
above transfer function is
delay system, the above auto-tuning method can also work well
8
>
> ðT=ð2pÞÞ2 basing on any reliable system identification technique. However,
>t¼
< ,
~ unlike the well known Z–N principle, there are still no simple
a  ð17Þ
>
> 1 1 1 ways to directly get the values of Kp, Ki and b of the DOPI
: K ¼ ~ a~ þ t ,
>
controller. Thus the citation of intelligent control algorithms
b
becomes an important and meaningful work in the applications.

where T is the period of the sustained oscillation. Therefore, the auto-

tuning procedure can be summarized as follows: 6.3. The genetic algorithm based DOPI control

~
 The parameters K and t are to be identified by tuning the a~ and b.
~ ~
 Fix a and increase b from 0 to the critical stable state (Fig. 9),
we can compute the approximate values of K and t by using
the period T and (17).
As an illustration, the genetic algorithm (GA) is applied to
search an optimized DOPI controller. Given an arbitrary distrib-
uted order integrator (i.e. fix b), the optimized Kp and Ki can be
calculated as follows:
 F. Zhou et al. / ISA Transactions 52 (2013) 429–437 435

electric motor v−t figure

450

400

350

300
v (mm/s)

250 Distributed Order Controller

Fractional Order Controller
Vg datum speed
200

150

100

50

0
0 5 10 15 20
t (s)

Fig. 7. The experimental data of the wheeled service robot, where a ¼ 1, ocg ¼ 200 Hz and fm ¼ p=6.

1
b
as 1
b
K
sb sa
Kp Ki s2 s
ln s
Kp Ki

Fig. 8. Simulation block diagram based on the online system identification, where a ¼ 1 and Kp,Ki and b are calculated by (9).

0.3
 Stop the GA until a pair of Kp and Ki are found that satisfy the
minimum criteria or the fixed number of generations is
0.25 reached.

0.2 For simplicity, let the system be (8), and the fitness function be
Z 1
0.15 J ¼ Ft u þ Qe2 ðtÞ þ Ru2 ðtÞ dt,
0

0.1 where tu is the rise time and the weighting factors F and Q are
positive semi-definite matrices and R is a positive definite matrix,
0.05
which is a typical cost functional of the optimal control systems.
In the simulations and experiments, b¼ 0.8282, F ¼2, Q¼ 0.999,
0
R¼0.001 and the initial population is 50. The experimental results
are shown in Fig. 10, where the results are converged after around
20 generations.
−0.05
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
Remark 5. The performance of the GA based DOPI control is
Fig. 9. The equiamplitude output of the plant. mainly depending on the fitness function and the permitted
domains of Kp and Ki. For instance, the citation of a penalty
function can efficiently reduce the overshoots, and, fix tu, the
 Find out the equivalent discrete distributed order integrator proper increases of the lower bounds of permitted domains can
DOIðz1 Þ.
dramatically accelerate the tracking speed. For example, let
 Calculate the incremental DOPI control by using (15) and (16), K p A ½300,500 and K i A ½300,500, it follows from the GA method
where Kp and Ki are undetermined constants.
that Kp ¼300 and Ki ¼373.4375, and the experimental results are
 Define the encoding and decoding methods associated with shown in Fig. 10. Besides, if required, the parameters Kp and Ki can
the permitted domains of Kp and Ki, initial population and a
be easily adjusted in the experiments as the traditional
proper fitness function.
incremental PID.
 Run the GA3 so that the next generations can be produced.
Remark 6. In Fig. 10, the slowly increasing curve is correspond-
ing to the P-type DOPI controller (Kp ¼24.4141 and Ki ¼0).
3
It should be noted that the controlled system can be either a real one or an Actually, let K p A ½0,M p  and K i A ½0,M i , if Mp and the iterative
identified system model. number are large enough, the optimal Ki is always tending to 0,
436 F. Zhou et al. / ISA Transactions 52 (2013) 429–437
Electric motor v−t figure using DOPI controller and GA tuner
450
400
350
300
v (mm/s)
250
200
150
100
50
0
0 5 10
Fig. 10. The experimental results by using the genetic algorithm based DOPI control, where the P-type DOPI is equivalent to the LQR formula and the other five curves
(Groups 1–5) show the robustness of the DOPI control.
and Kp is naturally related to the solution of the corresponding
algebra Riccati equation [81]
.
7. Conclusions
In this paper, the distributed order integrator was derived in
both time and frequency domains, which was leading to the DOPI
controller. A robust DOPI control strategy was discussed which
tolerated certain system uncertainties such as load, model error
and vibration, etc. Allowed for the combination of the theory and
applications of the DOPI control, a practical discrete incremental
DOPI control method was proposed based on the discretization
technique and the frequency characters. Based on the above
discussions, a robust control method, an auto-tuning strategy
and the genetic algorithm were applied to the motion control of
the wheeled service robot considering the safety and reliability
simultaneously. A number of experimental results were provided
to show the advantages of the discussed methods in fair ways.
Moreover, the techniques and results developed in this paper can
be widely used in the distributed/fractional order system, control
and signal processing, etc. Lastly, the citations and their refer-
ences of this paper also provide an index for the distributed order
fractional calculus.
Acknowledgments
This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation
of China (61075092, 61104009), Natural Science Foundation of
Shandong Province (ZR2011FM011, ZR2010AM007), Independent
Innovation Foundation of Shandong University (2010TB022,
2011JC017).
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