Model based design takes tighter control

The MathWorks has announced major upgrades to three of its control design software products - Control System Toolbox 7, Simulink Control Design 2 and Simulink Response Optimisation 3.

The MathWorks has announced major upgrades to three of its control design software products - Control System Toolbox 7, Simulink Control Design 2 and Simulink Response Optimisation 3.

The new versions provide a stronger integration with Simulink to create a streamlined platform for control design and optimisation using model-based design.

A new graphical user interface (GUI) unifies the three products, enabling control engineers of all experience levels to tune and optimise control systems on multidomain plant models directly in Simulink.

Across industries such as aerospace, defence, automotive, industrial automation and consumer electronics, the growing number and the complexity of design requirements engineers face has fuelled a demand for sophisticated control design strategies, which are typically difficult to implement.

Responding to this demand, The MathWorks not only expanded control design capabilities with the upgrades, but also seamlessly integrated the control design products with Simulink to simplify the workflow, reducing the number of design cycles and increasing productivity.

Together, the trio of products facilitates the control design process.

Control System Toolbox gives engineers the ability to systematically analyse, design, and tune control systems.

Simulink Control Design enables the design and analysis of sophisticated multi-loop control systems directly in Simulink.

With Simulink Response Optimisation, engineers can use numerical optimisation to tune the response of systems modelled in Simulink, satisfying performance requirements.

"One of the primary goals of these upgrades was to make systematic control design techniques more accessible".

"The tighter integration of control design software with Simulink helps engineers reduce the need for trial-and-error design and greatly simplifies the analysis and tuning of multi-loop systems", said Paul Barnard, Marketing Director, Control Design at The MathWorks.

"Furthermore, engineers can now apply numerical optimisation to control design to maximise system performance in fewer design cycles".

The integrated environment of Control System Toolbox, Simulink Control Design, Simulink Response Optimisation, and Simulink lets engineers make design tradeoffs and optimise the performance and robustness of the overall control system.

Control engineers tune the control parameters in their Simulink model either graphically or by using automated techniques such as PID or LQG.

With built-in visualisation tools, engineers can graphically analyse the effects of loop interactions, closed-loop performance and actuator bandwidth.

They can graphically specify design requirements in both time and frequency domains, such as rise time and overshoot or phase and gain margins and then apply numerical optimisation techniques to simultaneously tune the entire system to meet those requirements.

Control System Toolbox 7, Simulink Control Design 2 and Simulink Response Optimisation 3 are available immediately for the Microsoft Windows, Unix, Linux, and Macintosh platforms.

UK list prices start at GBP 800 for each product.

Back to top