A Structural Approach to CACSD

Dr. C. Magnus Rimvall
Chief Information Officer
KPMG AG
Badenerstrasse 172
Postfach
CH-8026 Zurich
Switzerland
Email: MagnusRimvall@Hotmail.Com
François E. Cellier
Department of Computer Science
ETH Zurich
CH-8092 Zurich
Switzerland
Email: FCellier@Inf.ETHZ.CH

Abstract

Many CACSD-packages perform their operations on one single data structure: the complex matrix. As long as we want to treat linear systems in the time domain, this structure is adequate as each system can be described by four such matrices. On the other hand, if we for example work in the frequency domain, we would like to describe our systems by transfer-function matrices. This four-dimensional structure can not easily be represented by two-dimensional matrices. Therefore, the new CACSD-Package, IMPACT (Interactive Mathematical Program for Automatic Control Theory), supplies the user with several data structures common in control theory, e.g. polynomial and transfer-function matrices, system descriptions, domains and trajectories. Moreover, IMPACT differs from other packages not only through the supported data-structures, it also offers an extremely versatile user interface. From a computer engineering point of view, IMPACT gives a new dimension to CACSD by being the first package to be implemented in Ada.

IMPACT is presently being implemented at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland. At this time, a kernel (controlling the interactive user dialogue) and a data adminsitrator (handling the dynamically used data structures) exist. In the present phase, the necessary control algorithms are developed/collected and included into IMPACT. The package is already internally used at ETH and will soon be generally available.

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