[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Control and polynomial functions
From: |
Federico Zenith |
Subject: |
Control and polynomial functions |
Date: |
Tue, 7 Sep 2004 11:21:54 +0200 |
User-agent: |
KMail/1.7 |
Hi all,
I am a PhD student at NTNU Trondheim (Norway). My tutoring professor, Sigurd
Skogestad, recently asked me to present him Scilab and Octave as alternative
tools to Matlab in process control. I had already used Scilab in that context
before, and knew it was working. Given the quantity of control-related
functions that I had already looked into while working on my documentation
patch, I thought that it would behave just as well.
However, Octave is sadly using an out-of-date way of representing linear
systems. It is painstakingly difficult only to make a feedback loop, which
involves multiple operations like connecting outputs and inputs together.
Instead of using overloaded +, -, *, / and \, a number of ad hoc functions
are present, like sysadd(), sysmult() and syssub(). I had no choice but to
tell him that Scilab and Matlab outperform Octave in control functions. I
thought this was sad because Octave is my favourite, since it's the only one
of the three which is FOSS (the Scilab licence is technically neither free
nor open-source - it's free of charge for non-commercial applications).
This out-of-date representation of systems stems partly from the out-of-date
representation of polynomials; I am convinced that polynomials should be
fixed first so that control functions can later be revamped, since using
polynomial matrices in defining systems is a very handy approach used in
Scilab. Here's my idea:
1- Imitate Scilab polynomials. They are handy. They define a polynomial
object, which is used to define a "rational" object (ratio of two
polynomials, a list with structure ( [info], num,den)) and "rational"
matrices. (This is at least the idea I got, I still have to dig in their
code)
The net result is that, instead of calling functions to sum or multiply
polynomials, the user simply uses + and *, which is much more intuitive.
(I'm not sure how Matlab 7.0 does this. Worth checking out?)
For example, defining a polynomial in Scilab is as follows:
s = poly(0,"s") // s is a polynomial whose variable is "s", with a single
// root in 0; therefore the result is "s".
// This is the most common definition of a polynomial,
// and is often found in startup scripts.
y = poly([0 2], "x") // y is a polynomial whose variable is "x", with two
// roots in 0 and 2. The result is x^2 - 2 * x
y = poly([0 2], "x", "coeff")
// This time, instead of the roots, the coefficients are
// defined, and the result is 2 * x.
2- Once this is implemented, such polynomial matrices may be used to define
linear systems. It is much easier to define a feedback loop with
T=inv(1+GK)*GK instead of hacking around with connections. This is at least
how control people like to do it today. In general, it would be wise to
imitate the current Matlab 7.0 implementation, which in turn took many ideas
from Scilab 2.6 and later ("make people work with systems, not jungles of
matrices").
Operating plan:
1- Define a structure for (rational) polynomials;
2- Implement a user-defined data structure (maybe writing the missing
documentation in octave.dvi while we're at it) for rational polynomials
matrices;
3- Rewrite the polynomial functions to accomodate for the new standard. They
are not incredibly many, just 1237 lines of code with comments and all;
4- Make a patch and submit to sources mailing list.
At some later point... - start working on the control functions.
I'd like to know whether there are others interested in this approach. I'm not
the definitive 1337 h4x0r, and someone more experienced may be of help.
I'm currently engaged in the Italian translation of the KDE project, which
takes a lot of my spare time, but I could evaluate shifting to Octave
development (it would be about time I move to something more challenging than
translations, even though it improved my Italian orthography..., ehm!),
especially since it's definitely more relevant for my job.
Is there someone who would like to start a small work group for the polynomial
issue?
Cheers,
-Federico
pgpUQtNGEC5Q4.pgp
Description: PGP signature
- Control and polynomial functions,
Federico Zenith <=