Single chip self-tunable N-input N-output PID control system with integrated analog front-end for miniature robotics

In this work, we present the design of an integrated, low power single chip multi-channel Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller for emerging miniature robotics, that includes N inputs and N corresponding outputs thereby resulting in N parallel channels in the control system. It includes analog front-end (AFE) and analog PID controllers for PID parameter tuning based on Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) algorithm. The AFE incorporates adaptive biasing to ensure low power. The PSO is optimized with respect to tuning precision, power and area of the overall system whose design has been proposed in this paper. This makes it attractive for real-time tuning of multiple miniaturized robotic devices with a single PSO tuning algorithm block assigned for the task. For simulation and testing purposes, we take N as 3 with the channels being defined by their application-ends or plants, namely: dc motor, temperature sensor and gyroscope.