In this paper, atom search optimization (ASO) algorithm and a novel chaotic version of it [chaotic ASO (ChASO)] are proposed to determine the optimal parameters of the fractional-order propor-tional+integral+derivative (FOPID) controller for dc motor speed control. The ASO algorithm is simple and easy to implement, which mathematically models and mimics the atomic motion model in nature, and is developed to address a diverse set of optimization problems. The proposed ChASO algorithm, on the other hand, is based on logistic map chaotic sequences, which makes the original algorithm be able to escape from local minima stagnation and improve its convergence rate and resulting precision. First, the proposed ChASO algorithm is applied to six unimodal and multimodal benchmark optimization problems and the results are compared with other algorithms. Second, the proposed ChASO-FOPID, ASO-FOPID, and ASO-PID controllers are compared with GWO-FOPID, GWO-PID, IWO-PID, and SFS-PID controllers using the integral of time multiplied absolute error (ITAE) objective function for a fair comparison. Comparisons were also made for the integral of time multiplied squared error (ITSE) and Zwe-Lee Gaing's (ZLG) objective function as the most commonly used objective functions in the literature. Transient response analysis, frequency response (Bode) analysis, and robustness analysis were all carried out. The simulation results are promising and validate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches. The numerical simulations of the proposed ChASO-FOPID and ASO-FOPID controllers for the dc motor speed control system demonstrated the superior performance of both the chaotic ASO and the original ASO, respectively. INDEX TERMS DC motor speed control, fractional order PID controller, chaotic atom search optimization algorithm, robustness analysis, transient response.