In staying true to its promise of releasing new product features and offerings twice a year for MATLAB and Simulink subscribers, MathWorks recently announced its latest release with the addition of support for analysis and design of control systems.
As the first update of the year, Release 2016a (R2016a) brings the new Control System Tuner app for engineers to:
- Automatically tune single-input, single-output (SISO) or multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) control systems by specifying design requirements such as reference tracking, disturbance rejection and stability margins.
- Automatically tune control system gains within the MATLAB and Simulink programs.
In addition to the Control System Tuner app, which is located in the Control System Toolbox, MathWorks has introduced a new app called Model Reducer to compute and compare reduced-order models.
Designed to help users simplify linear time-invariant models while preserving model dynamics interactively, Model Reducer lets engineers remove states with low energy contribution, select significant modes and cancel close pole/zero pairs as they relate to the application.
Finally, R2016a also introduces the overhauled Control System Designer for streamlining the process of combining plots such as Bode, root locus and closed-loop step response in a single window while simultaneously comparing multiple controller designs.
“Control System Toolbox becomes more powerful and easier to use in R2016a,” said Paul Barnard, director of design automation for MathWorks. “The new Control System Tuner app can automatically tune complex multivariable controllers in seconds, a task that often takes experienced engineers days or even weeks. Moreover, the new and redesigned apps are great for beginners too, as they can now design complex controllers and simplify complex models without writing complicated scripts.”
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