Nonlinear Control Design Blockset    

Quick Start

If you would like to get started using the Nonlinear Control Design Blockset quickly, this section describes a short series of actions you can take to get going:

  1. Make a model of your (nonlinear) system and controller using Simulink. Add input signals (e.g., steps, ramps, observed data) to the system for which you know what the desired output should look like.
  2. Attach the NCD block to the signals to be constrained. The Simulink system ncdblock contains the NCD block. To open the system, just type ncdblock at the MATLAB prompt.
  3. In the MATLAB workspace, initialize the variables you want to tune with "a best first guess."
  4. Double-click on the NCD block in your system to bring up a constraint figure for each constrained output. Click the Help push button on the constraint figure for general information on Nonlinear Control Design Blockset functionality or select Hot-key help... from the Style menu. Double-clicking on an NCD block also updates its icon in your Simulink system; the icon now displays the port number assigned this Nonlinear Control Design Blockset block.
  5. Stretch, move, open, split, or toggle through constraints by using the Edit menu items and the mouse buttons.
  6. Open the Optimization Parameters dialog box by selecting Parameters... from the Optimization menu. Pick a discretization interval (try between one and two percent of the total time axis). Type in the tunable variables separating them by spaces or commas. For now, the default entries of the other dialog box fields should suffice. Click the Help push button on the Optimization Parameters dialog box for more information.
  7. Optional: Open the Uncertain Variables dialog box by selecting Uncertainty ... from the Optimization menu. Uncertain variables should be initialized to their nominal values in the base workspace. Click the Help push button on the Uncertain Variables dialog box for more information.
  8. Optional: Save the constraint data to a file using the Save ... submenu of the File menu. Constraints previously saved to a file can be retrieved using the Load ... submenu of the File menu.
  9. Click the Start push button or select Start from the Optimization menu.

  Tutorial A Control Design Example