Design of a Simple PID Controller Tuning rule for Thermal Pain Inducers

Albeit pain is still treated as subjective phenomenon, ampleresearches are taken forward by many relevant research groups across the globe to find its objectivity. The experiments involved in these researches are designed in such a way that the healthy subjects are exposed to laboratory-induced controlled pain. These induced pain are either or combination of mechanical, thermal and chemical. The inducers exist for this purpose, in general, are expected to be an accurate and affordable; could be able to induce pain by measurable force, heat and chemical reaction for a required time duration. But, the pain inducers which are available in market satisfy our requirement at higher price. This work aims to simulate and test the performance of a process-following controller for a Peltier based thermal pain inducer. A simple tuning rule along with the explicit controller settings for a (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) PID controller has been derived in terms of Internal Model Principle. Simulation comparisons with a recently developed one are also made to check the performance and robustness of the proposed control scheme.