Achieving Precision of a PID-Controlled Nonlinear Mechanism Through a High-Fidelity Simulation

This work involved finding optimal PID gains for a nonlinear coupled mechanism. A parallel mechanism was presented as an example of such a mechanism. An accurate simulation that corresponds to the physical system was created, and friction parameters were identified through an optimization using a genetic algorithm. Subsequently, another optimization was performed to find optimal PID gains. Remarkable error reductions of 81% and 92% were observed in the experiments after implementing the optimal PID gains on the physical system, without any fine-tuning.