Hybrid Fuzzy-Fractional Order PID Control for Industrial Hydraulic Actuators System: Experimental Study

Due to its fast response and high reliability, the Industrial Hydraulic Actuator (IHA) system is widely preferred in modern industrial applications. The system integrates both electrical and hydraulic components; however, its inherent nonlinearities and significant model uncertainties make the design of an accurate trajectory-tracking controller a considerable challenge. This study proposes a Hybrid Fuzzy Fractional-Order Proportional-Integral-Derivative (HF-FOPID) controller to enhance the trajectory-tracking performance of an actual IHA system. An experimental workbench was established to collect real-time data, and a conventional FOPID controller was first developed with its parameters optimized using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The HF-FOPID controller incorporates fuzzy logic control framework, providing improved adaptability and effectiveness. Controller performance was validated using two types of trajectories and assessed through error metrics, including Mean Squared Error (MSE) and Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) where lower values indicate higher control accuracy. Experimental results demonstrate that the HF-FOPID controller outperforms the FOPID controller, achieving improvements in MSE and RMSE of 97.17% and 83.17%, respectively for point-to-point (PTP) tracking, and 57.48% and 34.79% for multi-sinusoidal tracking. These findings confirm that the HF-FOPID controller delivers superior high-precision trajectory tracking compared to conventional linear controllers.