alt Hacker NewsI saw a crazy stat somewhere like some large fraction of the industrial PID controllers that are actually deployed in plants are completely untuned--that is, just running default settings. I think it was a book about tuning PID controllers, but I don't have the exact citation handy..
I’d totally believe that. You can buy devices that even tune themselves automatically, using model-free methods like Ziegler-nichols. I’m not familiar with the domains where you would use that sort of thing, but I guess it would be applications that aren’t safety-critical, maybe air conditioning or something like that. I bet many people put the thing in place, and then it works well enough that they never even click the “tune” button