I signed up for one of the first MOOCs ever, about self driving cars by Sebastian Thrun, and of course PID was part of the curriculum.
I think that PID hits a certain sweet spot between cleverness, ease of implementation and practical utility that makes it catnip for the typical programmer's mind.
I liked it so much that when we had to implement it, I downloaded an open source driving simulator to see it work there instead of the simpler python environment we were using.
> I think that PID hits a certain sweet spot between cleverness, ease of implementation and practical utility that makes it catnip for the typical programmer's mind.
It's easy to implement, but hard to tune.
PID controllers can be built from analog pneumatic components, and often are.[1] This predates computer control. The I term is called "Reset" and the D term is called "Rate" in classical control.
[1] https://control.com/textbook/closed-loop-control/pneumatic-p...
It’s very intuitively appealing. We like it at my university for teaching first years how to build a line following robot. It’s one of the first times you can get students to really get that “ah” moment when they realise what they can do with code—it can affect the real world!
Whatever happened to this guy?
Sounds like he made a bag with the first AI craze and retired.