Refining PID Controllers Using Neural Networks

The KBANN approach uses neural networks to refine knowledge that can be written in the form of simple propositional rules. We extend this idea further by presenting the MANNCON algorithm by which the mathematical equations governing a PID controller determine the topology and initial weights of a network, which is further trained using backpropagation. We apply this method to the task of controlling the outflow and temperature of a water tank, producing statistically-significant gains in accuracy over both a standard neural network approach and a non-learning PID controller. Furthermore, using the PID knowledge to initialize the weights of the network produces statistically less variation in testset accuracy when compared to networks initialized with small random numbers.