Fractional-order PID (FOPID) controller is a generalization of traditional PID controller using fractional calculus. Compared to the traditional PID controller, in FOPID controller, the order of derivative portion and integral portion is not integer, which provides more flexibility in achieving control objectives. Design stage of such an FOPID controller consists of determining five parameters, i.e. proportional, integral and derivative gains {Kp, Ki, Id}, and extra integration and differentiation orders {lambda, mu} which has a large difference comparing with the conventional PID tuning rules, thus a suitable optimization algorithm is essential to the parameters tuning of FOPID controller. This paper focuses on the design of the FOPID controller using chaotic non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGAII) for hydraulic turbine regulating system (HTRS). The parameters chosen of the FOPID controller is formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem, in which the objective functions are composed by the integral of the squared error (ISE) and integral of the time multiplied squared error (ITSE). The chaotic NSGAII algorithm, which is an incorporation of chaotic behaviors into NSGAII, is used as the optimizer to search true Pareto-front of the FOPID controller and designers can implement each of them based on objective functions priority. The designed chaotic NSGAII based FOPID controller procedure is applied to a HTRS system. A comparison study between the optimum integer order PID controller and optimum fractional order PID controller is presented in the paper. The simulation and some experimental results validate the superiority of the fractional order controllers over the integer controllers. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.