Performance evaluation of a non linear PID controller using chaotic gravitational search algorithm for a twin rotor system

A novel strategy using a chaotic gravitational search algorithm (CGSA) based nonlinear PID control scheme, which is validated through a laboratory helicopter model called the twin rotor system, is presented in this paper. In this work, CGSA is used as a stochastic based global optimization algorithm for controller design in the twin rotor system adopted. The fine chaotic search process used in CGSA obtains the optimal solution in the iterative process based on the current best solution. The goal of the controller design in this paper is to stabilize the twin rotor system with considerable cross couplings to reach the selected position and follow the desired trajectory effectively. The addition of nonlinear functions to the PID controller structure initiates better error tracking and facilitates smooth output under changing input conditions. The design objective is to implement a nonlinear PID control scheme for the angular displacements of the twin rotor system with minimization of the integral square error (ISE) as the fitness function in the algorithm. The statistical performance of the controller is analyzed by considering the best, worst, mean, and standard deviations of ISE. In this work, simultaneous control of pitch and yaw angles is considered to get rid of the coupling effect between the two rotors. From the simulation results it is observed that the proposed work shows better performance than the other evolutionary computation techniques. The results also indicate the advantage of the proposed CGSA based tuning for the two degree of freedom MIMO control with standard reference trajectories as per the TRMS330-10 model.