An Educational Tool for PID Control: Evaluating a Robot Movement in Simulation and Reality

Teaching a Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller is challenging due to its complex concepts and traditional focus on lecture-based teaching. This approach may limit students' understanding and practical skills in tuning PID parameters, particularly in real-world industrial applications. Students may struggle with hands-on implementation and applying their knowledge effectively. Therefore, this study focuses on designing and developing a robot-based PID controller learning kit. The kit enabled students to tune parameters through a simulation program and real robot movement. Students could determine PID values and observe the effects of parameter adjustments on motion and direction. The learning kit's performance was evaluated to ensure proper moving functionality. The results clearly showed that the robot's movement behavior varied based on the different value settings of the PID parameters. For the simulation program, the study found that their motions closely matched the robot movements, consistent with a theory of linear control. Moreover, students rated the overall item highly in terms of design and development, indicating high satisfaction with the learning kit. However, this project does not involve the development of tools based on cutting-edge technologies or advanced image-processing tracking methods. Instead, this study focuses on enhancing students' understanding of PID control through the use of a computer simulation tool and line-following robots as media to provide students with a more concrete understanding of system response behavior and allowing students to experiment with adjusting error values in control equations to have accurate and consistent movement along a line, even when the line pattern changes.