Industry Summary Articles

MathWorks today announced new and updated apps for analysis and design of control systems. As part of Release 2016a, Control System Toolbox now offers a Control System Tuner app that allows engineers to automatically tune SISO or MIMO control systems in MATLAB and Simulink.

Controls engineers in industries such as aerospace and defense, automotive, and industrial automation and machinery can use the Control System Tuner app to tune the parameters of fixed architecture MIMO control systems that have tunable elements such as gains, PID controllers, or low-order filters. Engineers can specify design requirements such as reference tracking, disturbance rejection, and stability margins, and automatically tune control system gains to meet these requirements.

Control System Toolbox also introduces a new app to compute and compare reduced-order models. The Model Reducer app helps users to interactively simplify linear time-invariant models while preserving model dynamics important for the application. Engineers can use the Model Reducer app to remove states with low energy contribution, select significant modes, and cancel close pole/zero pairs.

R2016a also includes a redesigned Control System Designer app. Engineers can now combine plots such as Bode, root locus, and closed-loop step response in one window, and compare multiple controller designs.

“Control System Toolbox becomes more powerful and easier to use in R2016a,” says Paul Barnard, director – design automation, 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, who can now design complex controllers and simplify complex models without writing complicated scripts.”

To view the original press release, please click here.

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