  Particle Swarm Optimization technique offers optimal or suboptimal solution
to multidimensional rough objective functions. In this paper, this optimization
technique is used for designing fractional order PID controllers that give
better performance than their integer order counterparts. Controller synthesis
is based on required peak overshoot and rise time specifications. The
characteristic equation is minimized to obtain an optimum set of controller
parameters. Results show that this design method can effectively tune the
parameters of the fractional order controller.
