FLOreS - Fractional order loop shaping MATLAB toolbox
For control engineers, it provides an intuitive graphical tool for fractional order controller design, but it is an incremental improvement over existing optimization-based toolboxes.
The paper presents FLOreS, a MATLAB toolbox for designing fractional order controllers via loop shaping, enabling engineers to use frequency response data and prior knowledge. It was validated on a precision stage, demonstrating industry readiness.
A novel toolbox named FLOreS is presented for intuitive design of fractional order controllers (FOC) using industry standard loop shaping technique. This will allow control engineers to use frequency response data (FRD) of the plant to design FOCs by shaping the open loop to meet the necessary specifications of stability, robustness, tracking, precision and bandwidth. FLOreS provides a graphical approach using closed-loop sensitivity functions for overall insight into system performance. The main advantage over existing optimization toolboxes for FOC is that the engineer can use prior knowledge and expertise of plant during design of FOC. Different approximation methods for fractional order filters are also included for greater freedom of final implementation. This combined with the included example plants enables additionally to be used as an educational tool. FLOreS has been used for design and implementation of both integer and fractional order controllers on a precision stage to prove industry readiness.