Experiences with adaptive control since 1982

Thirteen years of experience of adaptive control with Novatune is presented. This is a predictive control with short horizon like the original self-tuning controllers. The drawbacks and merits of the method are presented, and considerations for using it. These include relevant issues that apply to adaptive control in general. Some applications are referred with their particular problems and benefits. The experiences motivated the development of autotuning and adaptive PID control. The result is Pidcona, which applies a dominant pole placement design method. This controller is described in brief, pointing out how simple it is to use. Its ability to control stochastically disturbed processes with deadtime is exemplified and compared to Novatune and linear quadratic control. There is also a short note on application experiences with it