Computer Aided Control Systems Design

This paper reflects our experience with Computer Aided Control System Design (CACSD). A first section briefly presents a CACSD-system for student use (INTOPS) which has been developed by our group some years ago. Our experience with this software system is outlined. A second section discusses a few state-of-the-art CACSD-systems developed by other research groups. In particular, the systems developed by K.J. Åström and his group are mentioned (SIMNON, IDPAC, MODPAC, POLPAC, and SYNPAC), as they seem to be among the most advanced systems currently available. A next chapter discusses the advents of a more general expression parser at hand of the MATLAB matrix manipulation program. It is shown that, though MATLAB was not really Designed for the implementation of control algorithms, many control problems can be formulated and solved very elegantly by means of MATLAB. A new CACSD-system (IMPACT), which is currently under development by our group, is then presented. This system shall enhance the capabilities of MATLAB by encompassing additional operations and data structures particularly useful in control system analysis and design. A final chapter concludes this discussion by mentioning some perspectives for further development.