A Two Degrees of Freedom PID Control System,

its Features and Applications

Masanori Yukitomo*, Takashi Shigemasa , Yasushi Baba*, Fumio Kojima

* Toshiba Corporation
1 Toshiba-Cho,Fuchu-shi,Tokyo 183-8511 JAPAN
e-mail: masanori.yukitomo@toshiba.co.jp

Toshiba IT & Control Systems Corporation

2-24-1 Harumi-Cho,Fuchu-shi,Tokyo 183-8511 JAPAN
Abstract
PID control systems are widely used as a basic control
technology for industrial control systems today, due to its
well-known simple PID control structure. However, the
tuning of the PID control systems is not always easy,
because of its simple control structure for wide class of
process characteristics. What is a widely applicable and
simple process controller with an easy tuning and good
control performance? This is a motivation of the paper. Prof.
Hidenori Kimura of Univ. of Tokyo proposed MorelDriven Control (MDC) Concept at CDC2000 Sydney. He
defined a model driven control as a control system
architecture, which uses a model of the plant as a principal
component of controller. PIDd, PPI (Predictive PI), IMC
(Internal Model Control) and DMC (Dynamic Matrix
Control) belong to a class of MDC. Features of MDC are
simple structure, easy tuning approach and proven stability
and robustness. Based on the MDC concept, aiming for
wide applicability for even unstable processes, we
developed a model driven PID control system, named MD
PID control system, combining with a PD local feedback,
an IMC and a set-point filter. That was one degree of
freedom type.
In this paper, we propose a new model driven two degrees
of freedom PID control scheme, named MD TDOF PID
control, in order to obtain better disturbance regulating
property by extending conventional MD PID control system.
Through some features and some practical field
experiments, the MD TDOF PID control system shows
good control performances with easy tuning.
1

Introduction

As in Control Technology Survey Report by SICE [5], a

report by Takatsu and Ito [21] and a paper by Desborough
and Miller [6], PID control systems are widely used as a
basic control technology in todays industrial control
systems. However, the tuning of PID control systems is not
always easy, because of its simple control structure for wide
class of practical process characteristics, such as long deadtime processes, oscillatory processes, unstable processes

and processes with zero. In order to improve the issues,

several advanced PID control technologies, such as, I-PD
control systems by Kitamori [10][11] and two degrees of
freedom PID control systems by Araki [1], Hiroi [7] and
Shigemasa [14], have been proposed since early 1980s.
However, these control systems have difficulties for long
dead-time processes. What is a widely applicable and
simple process controller with easy tuning and good control
performance? This is a motivation of the paper.
Recently, From Model-based Control to Model-Driven
Control was proposed by Kimura [9]. He defined a
Model-Driven Control (MDC) concept as a control system
architecture which uses a model of the plant as a principal
component of controller. Advantages of the MDC are
simple and easy to understand the control architecture, good
tunability and its robustness. PIDd control systems by
Shinskey [17][18], PPI (Predictive PI) control systems by
Hagglund and Astrom [2] and Internal Model Control
(IMC) systems by Morari and Zafiriou [12] can be
considered to belong to the same class of MDC. However, it
is difficult to realize the Model Driven control system for
unstable processes. In order to improve these issues, a
Model-Driven PID control system, which is combined with
PD feedback block, IMC block and set-point filter block
was proposed by Shigemasa et al. [15][16].
In this paper, we propose a new Model-Driven two degrees
of freedom PID control system, named MD TDOF PID
control, in order to obtain better disturbance regulating
property by extending a MD-PID control system and a
tuning approach. The MD TDOF PID control system is
capable of stabilizing for even unstable processes by using
local PD (Proportional and Derivative) feedback, regulating
quickly for disturbances and tracking quickly to changes of
set-point by using a TDOF IMC by Brosilow [4]. Main
efforts for tuning phase are to identify a first order delay
system with dead time for the control process with local PD
feedback. This paper shows properties of the MD TDOF
PID control system, a tuning approach, some results of
practical industrial field experiments.