ACO based controller and anti-windup tuning for motion systems with flexible transmission

Optimal controller and anti-windup tuning is a difficult problem for practical motion systems with flexible coupling and cascaded loops control structure especially when time scale separation is insufficient. An Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) based methodology for global off-line tuning of Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controllers with antiwindup is proposed for such systems. Given the core ACO algorithm, the designer can modify or create new performance indices to fully grasp the desired behavior with multi-objective criteria.