{"id":4929,"date":"2013-05-03T12:59:04","date_gmt":"2013-05-03T11:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?p=4929"},"modified":"2013-05-04T20:10:57","modified_gmt":"2013-05-04T19:10:57","slug":"software-for-the-teaching-of-and-tinkering-with-control-theory-and-control-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/?p=4929","title":{"rendered":"Software for the teaching of (and tinkering with) Control Theory and Control Systems"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently picked up a few control theory<\/a> books from the University library to support a project I am involved with right now and was interested in the seemingly total dominance of MATLAB<\/a> in this subject area.\u00a0 Since I’m not an expert in control systems, I’m not sure if this is because MATLAB is genuinely the best tool for the job or if it’s simply because it’s been around for a very long time and so has become entrenched.\u00a0 Comments from anyone who works in relevant fields would be most welcome.<\/p>\n

On its own, MATLAB is insufficient to teach introductory control systems courses — you also need the control systems toolbox<\/a> as a bare minimum but most books and courses also seem to require Simulink<\/a> and the symbolic math toolbox<\/a>.\u00a0 All of these are included in the student edition of MATLAB<\/a> which is very reasonably priced.<\/p>\n

If you are not a registered student, however, and don’t work for someone who can provide you with MATLAB it’s going to be very expensive!\u00a0 As far as I can tell, your only option would be to purchase commercial licenses which are very expensive (as in thousands of dollars\/pounds for MATLAB and a few toolboxes).<\/p>\n

What else is out there?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have a strong interest in mathematical software and so I know that there are several products that have support for control theory. Here are some that I know of and have access to myself<\/p>\n