Fractional and integer order control. Application to DC motor speed control

Sustainable engineering implies the active management of engineering resources, by cutting down expenses and ensuring the premises for further development. Advanced control strategies offer increased robustness, high reliability and efficiency, but they require fast computation times and powerful numerical resources. Hence, the trend in control engineering should be directed towards developing and employing cheap, reliable and energy-efficient devices that support the implementation of the advanced control strategies. This would eventually lead to a more sustainable use of the available technological resources and a decrease of the energy consumption. The present paper offers a comparison between a fractional order control algorithm and a traditional PI controller for a DC motor. The results show that the fractional order controller has the pros of the advanced control methods, offering increased robustness, while the cons related to the computation requirements are avoided through a simple implementation technique that is similar to that of a classical PI controller.