IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Vol.

7, Issue 5, September 2010

ISSN (Online): 1694-0814
www.IJCSI.org

Comparison between Conventional and Fuzzy Logic PID

Controllers for Controlling DC Motors
Essam Natsheh1 and Khalid A. Buragga 2
1

Department of Management Information Systems, College of Applied Studies & Community Services, King Faisal University
Hofuf, Al-Hassa 31982, Saudi Arabia
2

Department of Information Systems, College of Computer Sciences & IT, King Faisal University
Hofuf, Al-Hassa 31982, Saudi Arabia

Abstract
Fuzzy logic and proportional-integral-derivative (PID)
controllers are compared for use in direct current (DC) motors
positioning system. A simulation study of the PID position
controller for the armature-controlled with fixed field and fieldcontrolled with fixed armature current DC motors is performed.
Fuzzy rules and the inferencing mechanism of the fuzzy logic
controller (FLC) are evaluated by using conventional rule-lookup
tables that encode the control knowledge in a rules form. The
performance assessment of the studied position controllers is
based on transient response and error integral criteria. The results
obtained from the FLC are not only superior in the rise time,
speed fluctuations, and percent overshoot but also much better in
the controller output signal structure, which is much remarkable
in terms of the hardware implementation.

Keywords: Three-term controller, PID controller, fuzzy systems,

fuzzy logic controller, DC Motors.

1. Introduction
Lotfi Zadeh, the father of fuzzy logic, claimed that many
sets in the world that surrounds us are defined by a nondistinct boundary. Zadeh decided to extend two-valued
logic, defined by the binary pair {0, 1}, to the whole
continuous interval [0, 1], thereby introducing a gradual
transition from falsehood to truth [1].
Fuzzy control is a control method based on fuzzy logic.
Just as fuzzy logic can be described simply as "computing
with words rather than numbers"; fuzzy control can be
described simply as "control with sentences rather than
equations". A fuzzy controller can include empirical rules,
and that is especially useful in operator controlled plants.
A comprehensive review of the classical design and
implementation of the fuzzy logic controller can be found
in the literature [2], [3], [4]. A fuzzy IF-THEN rule-based
system consists of the following modules [5], [6]:

Fuzzification: Converting crisp facts into fuzzy sets

described by linguistic expressions. Membership
functions can be flat on the top, piece-wise linear and
triangle shaped, rectangular, or ramps with horizontal
shoulders.
Inference: The fuzzy IF-THEN rule expresses a fuzzy
implication relation between the fuzzy sets of the
premise and the fuzzy sets of the conclusion. The
following steps describe this process:
1. Matching of the facts with the rule premises
(determination of the degree of firing DOF of the
facts to the rule premises).
2. If the rule contains logic connections between
several premises by fuzzy AND or fuzzy OR the
evaluation is performed by t-norms or t-conorms
(the result gives then the DOF of the facts to the
complete premise).
3. Implication: The next step is the determination of
the individual rule output. The DOF of a rule
interacts with its consequent to provide the output
of the rule. It will be a fuzzy subset over the output
universe.
Aggregation: This process aggregates the individual
rule outputs to obtain the overall system output. It will
be also a fuzzy subset over the output universe (a
union operation yields a global fuzzy set of the
output).
Defuzzification to obtain crisp output (various
defuzzification methods can be used, as, e.g., center
of gravity, bisector of area, and mean of maximum, to
obtain a crisp numerical output value).

A PID-like (proportional plus integral plus derivative,

PID) fuzzy logic controller (FLC), or simply PID-like
FLC, algorithms have been and continue to be a very
active and fruitful research field since Mamdani and
Assilian pioneering work on fuzzy controller in 1974 [3];
the controller is shown in Fig. 1. The impetus behind this

128

IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Vol. 7, Issue 5, September 2010
ISSN (Online): 1694-0814
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continuity of the subject lies largely in the fact the

conventional PID algorithms has been successfully used in
the process industries since 1940s [7] and remains the
most commonly used algorithm today, while numerous
application of fuzzy logic control (FLC) have immerged
covering a wide range of practical areas [8] and that many
software and hardware products for fuzzy control have
been commercialized during the last few years.

allows a novice to construct a set of membership functions

for a specific linguistic variable systematically.

2.1 Ideal PID-like FLC

A comprehensive review of the classical design and
implementation of the ideal PID-like FLC can be found in
[3], [6]. The control law can be realized by:
U (k) = F (e (k), se (k), de (k))

Z -1

e (kT)

U (k)
se (kT)

-1

PID

1
T

FLC

de (kT)

Fig. 1 PID-like fuzzy logic controller.

Because designing methods of PID-like FLC emulates

human control strategy, their principles are easy to
understand for non-control specialists. During the last two
decades, designing methods of conventional PID-like
controller have been using more and more advanced
mathematical tools. This is needed in order to solve
difficult problems in a rigorous fashion. However, this
also results in fewer and fewer practical engineers who
can understand these design methods. Therefore, practical
engineers who are on the front line of designing consumer
products tend to use the approaches that are simple and
easy to understand. Design method of the PID-like FLC is
just such approaches. The objective of this paper is to
identify and study the designing method of the PID-like
FLC
The remaining of this paper is organized as follows:
Section 2 is presents the designing of the PID-like FLC.
Comparing the performance of conventional PID and PIDlike FLC design methods using second-order armaturecontrolled DC motor and third-order field-controlled DC
motor as a case studies are presented in section 3. Finally,
section 4 presents the conclusion.

2. Designing the PID-Like FLC

In the following section, we propose a design method for a
PID-like FLC. A simple mean for designating membership
functions for the PID-like FLC is presented. This method

129

(1)

where e (k), se (k) and de (k) are error, integral of error

and rate of change in error, respectively; U (k) is the
control action and the function F is the control law that is
described by a rule-base. The reasoning algorithm
translates the set of vague rules into a mapping:
U (k) = f (e (k), se (k), de (k))

U k K P e k K i se k K d de k
that is similar to the ideal PID control algorithm:

(2)

The major problem to this design method is that it is

difficult to write rules for the integral action [9]. Another
problem is integrator windup. Windup occurs when the
actuator has limits, such as maximum speed for a motor.
When the actuator saturates, the control action stays
constant, but the error will continue to be integrated, the
integrator winds up. The integral term may become very
large and it will then take a long time to wind it down
when the error changes sign. Large overshoots may be the
consequence.

2.2 Rule-base Matrix of the PID-like FLC

In the following we shall discuss the nature of the rules
contained in the PID-like FLC rule-base. The typical
response of the second-order and third-order systems is
shown in Fig. 2.

IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Vol. 7, Issue 5, September 2010
ISSN (Online): 1694-0814
www.IJCSI.org
Fig. 2 The general response of the second-order and third-order systems.

According to the sign and magnitude of error e (k) and its

change de (k), the response plane is roughly divided into
five zones. The index used for identifying the response
zones is defined as [11], [12]:

130

maintained. The rules that belong to this zone

realize meta-rule 1.
To design PID-like FLC, we propose three-dimensional
rule-base matrix described in Table 2, where N, Z, and P
are the linguistic labels negative, zero, and positive of the
term sets error, change of the error, and sum of the error.
Table 2: Rule-base matrix of the PID-like FLC

Z2: e < 0 and de < 0,

Z1: e > 0 and de < 0,
Z4: e > 0 and de > 0,
Z3: e < 0 and de > 0,
Z5: e 0 and de 0.
So, we can identify five main homogenous zones in PIDlike FLC rule-base, as shown in Table 1, where N, Z, and
P are the linguistic labels negative, zero, and positive of
the term sets error, change of the error, and sum of the
error.

Change of the error

N
Z
Z
Z

Z2

N
Z
P

Z3
Z5

Z1
N

Z4
P

N
Z
P
Sum of the error

N
Z
P

N
N
N
Z
N

N
N
N
Z
Z

Change of the error

N Z Z Z P
N N N N Z
N Z Z Z P
Z P P P P
P N Z P N
Sum of the error

P
Z
P
P
Z

P
Z
P
P
P

2.3 Optimizing the Membership Functions

Table 1: State plane of the PID-like FLC rule-base

Error

Error

Tang and Mulholand [13] propose the following three

meta-rules:
MR1: If both e (k) and de (k) are zero, then maintain
present control setting.
MR2: If conditions are such that e (k) will go to
zero at a satisfactory rate, then maintain present
control setting.
MR3: If e (k) is not self-correcting, then control action
U(k) is not zero and depends on the sign and magnitude of
e (k) and de (k).
Yager and Filev [6] use these three meta-rules to analyze
the general rule-bases of the FLC as follows:
In zone 1 and 3 the error is self-correcting and
U(k) is almost zero; that is, the control variable
remains at its present setting. The rules of these
zones realize meta-rule 2.
In zone 2 and 4 the errors are not self-correcting
and consequently negative and positive,
respectively, control action U (k) applies. The
magnitude of U (k) changes with respect to the
magnitudes of e (k) and de (k). The rules
associated with these zones are related to metarule 3.
In zone 5 both e (k) and de (k) are close to zero.
The system is in a steady state and U (k) is almost
zero, that is, the present control setting is

In real applications of FLC, the membership functions are

constructed by assembling knowledge from the experts
and then modified by laboriously surveying the control
response of the process. In most control cases, the FLC
cannot be effective without carefully arranging the
membership functions.
In the theoretical analysis of the FLC, the selection of
membership functions does not get much attention from
the majority of researchers. Most use isosceles triangular
functions with equal spans throughout the whole universe
of discourse as membership functions for their FLCs [11],
[12], [17]. The main advantage of choosing this type of
membership function is that it eases the difficulties in
analyzing the structure of the FLC. However, almost all
the applications of FLC adopt non-equal span membership
functions to cope with the real control problems.
Instinctively, the closer the control response to the setpoint
(or normal condition), the narrow the membership
function range should be. For some highly nonlinear
processes a FLC with equal-span triangular membership
function is not adequate to achieve a good control result.

(x)
negative

zero

U x

K x

positive

Kx

Ux

Fig. 3 Membership functions for fuzzy variable x.

IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Vol. 7, Issue 5, September 2010
ISSN (Online): 1694-0814
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For fuzzy variable x with universe of discourse [Ux, Ux]

and three fuzzy sets negative, zero, and positive we use the
membership functions shown in Fig. 3 to represent them.
The problem is simplified to be the determination of Kx
point in each fuzzy variable.
To accomplish a better performance and to devise a
systematic method to obtain optimal membership
functions, we propose the following algorithm:
Determine the universe of discourse Ux for each fuzzy
variable;
Initialize Kx value to each fuzzy variable to be Kx = Ux / 2;
Initialize IAE and ITAE to large values;
For i=1 to max number of epochs to refinement all Kx
For j=1 to min number of epochs to refinement one
Kx
Run the experiment and get new_IAE and
new_ITAE ;
If ((new_IAE < IAE) and (new_ITAE < ITAE))
IAE = new_IAE ;
ITAE = new_ITAE ;
Save Kx ;
End if
If ((new_IAE IAE) and (new_ITAE ITAE))
Kx = Kx increase_ratio;
Else
Kx = Kx decrease_ratio;
End if
End for
End for
We suggest using decrease_ratio and increase_ratio as 0.9
and 1.05 respectively. IAE and ITAE are defined as
follows:

Integral of the absolute of the error (IAE) defined by:

IAE e t dt

The integral of time multiplied by the absolute of

error (ITAE) defined by:

ITAE t e t dt

where e (t) is the measured error. The calculation in the

studies was implemented by substituting an algebraic sum
for the integrals [8]. IAE accounts mainly for error at the
beginning of the response and to a lesser degree for the
steady state duration. ITAE keeps account of errors at the
beginning but also emphasizes the steady state [10].

131

3. Performance Analysis of the PID-Like FLC

3.1 Introduction
Having designed a fuzzy PID-like controller, it is
important to validate its performance and compare it with
conventional PID controllers. Analyzing time responses
usually makes such evaluations. But simply examining the
behavior of a controller is not enough to validate its
performance or prove that it is better or worse than other
controllers are. In the next section, we suggest using two
performance measures with two simulated systems. The
objectives of the simulation are to demonstrate the
feasibility of the fuzzy PID-like design method when
applied to second order systems and third order systems.
Then we compare their performance with the performance
of conventional design method.
In the following section, we present the performance
measures that will be used during this study. In section
3.3, we present the applications that will be used in testing
and analyzing the performance. Section 3.4 presents
implementation technique for the PID-like FLC. The
simulation results of this controller will be presented in
section 3.5.

3.2 Performance Measures

To test our model, we choose to use two performance
measures. These measures will be used in analyzing the
performance of the PID-like FLC. They are:
1. Transient response: One of the most important
characteristics of control systems is their transient
response. The transient response is the response of a
system as a function of time. It can be described in
terms of two factors[18]:
The swiftness of response, as represented by the
rise-time (Tr).
The closeness of the response to the desired
response, as represented by the overshoot (Os)
and settling-time (Ts).
2. Error integral criteria: The performance was
evaluated by two frequently used error integral
criteria IAE and ITAE as was described in the
previous section.

3.3 Description of the Applications used in our Study

Two types of direct current (DC) motors are studied to
examine the performance correspond to various design
methods to design PID-like FLC.
DC motors are classified into several broad categories.
They are described in [24]. The DC motors have

IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Vol. 7, Issue 5, September 2010
ISSN (Online): 1694-0814
www.IJCSI.org

separately excited-field, in which the field winding is

separate from the armature. They are either armaturecontrolled with fixed field or field-controlled with fixed
armature current [16], as shown in Fig. 4.

132

where Km is motor gain constant and Tm is motor time

constant. For simplicity, we assume that Km = 1 newtonm/amp and Tm = 1 second.

3.3.2 Field-controlled DC Motors

Separately excited-field
DC motors

Armature-controlled
DC motors

The transfer function between the output angular

displacement of this motor shaft (t) and its input control
action U (t) is given by [16]:
Km
s

U s s T f s 1 Tm s 1

Field-controlled
DC motors

Fig. 4 Separately excited-field DC motors.

DC motors whether armature-controlled or fieldcontrolled, are used in our simulation. The block diagram
of such systems is shown in Fig. 5. The control objective
for both types of DC motors is to reach a specified motor
position using an appropriate input drive voltage.
A zero-order holder device is used to keep a constant
controller output during each interval. The PID controller
inputs are defined as follows:
e kT setpo int t position t | t kT

e kT e k 1 T
T

se kT se k 1T T e k 1T

de kT

here T is sampling interval time; setpoint(t) and position(t)

are reference and process output that is the angular
displacement of the motor shaft.
Setpoint
+

e (t)

e*(t)

PID-like
FLC

U(t)

Zero-Order
Hold

U*(t)

DC
Motor

Output (t)

Fig. 5 DC Motor system with PID-like FLC.

3.3.1 Armature-controlled DC Motors

Ogata [16] gives the transfer function between the output
angular displacement of the motor shaft (t) and the input
control action U (t):
Km
s

U s s Tm s 1

10

where Km is motor gain constant, Tf is time constant of

field circuit and Tm is time constant of inertia-friction
element. For simplicity, we assume that Km = 1 rad/voltsec, Tf = 0.1 second and Tm = 1 second.

3.4 Implementation of the PID-like FLC

For simulating the design method of PID-like FLC, we
code the fuzzy inference system using C language; see
appendix A. In the implementation, MIN operator is
chosen as AND connective between the antecedents of the
rules of the FLC and as the fuzzy implication operation,
while MAX operator is chosen as OR connective between
the individual rules. Center of area (COA) is chosen as
defuzzification method [2], [14], which defined as:
U

x x
x
i

11

Here xi is a running point in a discrete universe, and (xi)

is its membership value in the membership function.
Having defined the fuzzy linguistic control rules, the
membership functions corresponding to each element in
the linguistic set must be defined. We use optimal
membership functions method described in the previous
section to define the membership functions for e, de, se
and U linguistic variables. These membership functions
used for both DC motor systems types, have universe of
discourse of e, de, se and U as [-50 50], [-40 40], [-100
100], and [-40 40] respectively.
For designing PID-like FLC for both DC motor types, 50
radian were used as desired angular displacement of the
motor shaft and sampling interval time T were used as 1
second.

IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Vol. 7, Issue 5, September 2010
ISSN (Online): 1694-0814
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133

3.5 Simulation Results

Comparisons between step responses of armaturecontrolled DC motor and field-controlled DC motor
systems using conventional PID controller and the PIDlike controller are shown in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 respectively.
Table 3 and Table 4 compares the transient response and
error integral criteria of those two systems.

Fig. 7 Step response of field-controlled DC motor system using

conventional and fuzzy PID controllers.

Table 4: Performance comparison of field-controlled DC motor system

Fig. 6 Step response of armature-controlled DC motor system using

conventional and fuzzy PID controllers.

Table 3: Performance comparison of armature-controlled DC motor

system

Using
conventional
PID controller
Using PID-like
FLC

Tr

Ts

(Sec.)

(Sec.)

Os
(%)

IAE

Using
conventional
PID controller
Using PID-like
FLC

12

2.29

160.48

631.83

2.16

126.93

590.69

Throughout the experiments, we assumed the operating

condition for both controllers was fixed and there were no
motor parameters and motor load variations. From the
running results as shown in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7, the PID-like
FLC performed better than that of the conventional PID
controller.
Taking the conventional PID controller as a base system,
Table 5 shows the percentage of improvement of PID-like
FLC over conventional PID controller. From this table its
shown that using the PID-like FLC with armaturecontrolled DC motor, took about 58% less time than that
of conventional PID controller to reach the desired
position and 43% with field-controlled DC motor system.

Ts
(Sec.)

Os
(%)

IAE

ITAE

14

7.03

246.59

1490.1

4.95

178.29

856.61

Table 5: Percentage of improvement of PID-like FLC over conventional

PID controller

ITAE

Tr
(Sec.)

Armaturecontrolled DC
motor system
Fieldcontrolled DC
motor system

Tr

Ts

(Sec.)

(Sec.)

Os
(%)

IAE

ITAE

43%

58%

6%

21%

7%

38%

43%

30%

28%

43%

The simulation results for the system with PID-like FLC

shows a constant speed behavior in the steady state for
both cases aforementioned. Moreover, a very fast rise time
without a large overshoot and a very low percentage of
speed fluctuations are also observed in the step responses
when compared to the conventional PID controller cases.
When the voltages obtained by the PID-like FLC in both
cases are compared with the ones in conventional PID
control results, an almost constant steady state behavior is
observed. Indeed, a vigorous change in the controller
output to be used as an input voltage to the motor as in the
PID case is not realizable in a real time hardware
implementation. The reason for getting such a smooth

IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Vol. 7, Issue 5, September 2010
ISSN (Online): 1694-0814
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controller output in the PID-like FLC case is because of

the fact that PID-like FLC updates the controller output by
making comparison of the error and the change of error in
the angular displacement of the motor shaft. In this way, a
robust and a realizable controller output signal is obtained.
These observations, on the other hand, successfully
demonstrate that the PID-like FLC to regulate the angular
displacement of the motor shaft of a DC motors is one of
the best selections in the mechanism control area.

4. Conclusions
The design and implementation of armature-controlled and
field-controlled DC motor system using both conventional
PID and PID-like FLC have been presented. Comparisons
of experimental results of the conventional PID controller
and PID-like FLC show that the PID-like FLC is able to
perform better than the conventional PID controller.
Results indicate that even without knowing the detail of
the control plants, we were able to construct a well
performed fuzzy logic controller based on the experience
about the position controller.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to express their appreciation to
Deanship of Scientific Research at King Faisal University
for supporting this research.

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Essam F. Natsheh obtained his PhD in Communications and

Networks Engineering from University Putra Malaysia in 2006.
Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at the Management
Information Systems Department, College of Applied Studies and
Community Services, King Faisal University (Saudi Arabia). Essam
has more than 15 years of teaching and research experiences in
Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. Also, he has more than 20
publications in refereed journals at international level. His research
interest is mobile ad-hoc networks, in particular, the development
of a new routing algorithm for this type of networking.
Khalid A. Buragga received the B.Sc. in Computer Information
Systems (CIS) from King Faisal University, Saudi Arabia, and the
M.Sc. in CIS from University of Miami, USA, and the Ph.D. in
Information Technology from George Mason University, USA. He is
currently an assistant professor at college of Computer Sc. & IT,
King Faisal University. His general research interests span the
areas of software design, development, quality, and reliability;
business
process
re-engineering,
integrating
systems;
communications, networking and signal processing.