Integral Control

08/17/17

“How can control systems be based on the summation of error levels over time?”

 

Control systems respond to an error between feedback and setpoints by making changes to the next output. However, sometimes the error does not change fast enough or it changes too quickly. So how could we devise a mechanism to solve this issue? Well, let’s start with a simple idea. We know that if an error value were to persist over time it would show easily on a graph. So what if we were to just take the area of the error under this graph and modify our outputs accordingly? This is the fundamental idea behind integral control and is one of the prime factors in the ever so often used PID control system.

• Engineering
• Mathematics