Variable-speed control on PLC with PC-based by fuzzy approach for a novel ladder-climbing trainer

The proposed novel ladder climbing trainer has two operation areas, a 90° vertical area and a 75° inclination area. The innovative ladder climbing trainer has not only an active control module which uses external power to drive a direct current (DC) motor but also passive power which is directly actuated by the motion of the user. The design of the control environment for this ladder-climbing trainer integrates programmable logical control (PLC) with personal computer (PC) control. In this study, proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control based on a genetic algorithm (GA) to search for the primary optimal gain for variable-speed control has been proposed. Moreover, a controller adopted in an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) has been implemented for this system. By implementing both the proposed fuzzy controller and a traditional fixed-parameter PID controller, the proposed fuzzy approach is demonstrated to offer a number of performance advantages over a PID controller.