MASCoT : a model-based automatic software compensation toolkit for feedback systems

Abstract

The process of designing a compensator for a feedback system has no well-defed algorithms that can guarantee success. Experience and innovation are often a designer's best weapons in solving feedback control problems. The only reasonably successful attempt at automating the design of compensators, the Matlab Control System Toolbox, comes from Mathworks. It is an add-on which requires their Matlab program and is costly, system dependent, and difficult to use. My thesis combines different rent electrical engineering approaches at series compensation of linear feedback systems to design a platform independent and very easy-to-use software toolkit called MASCoT. This toolkit allows a designer to quickly visualize and automatically evaluate several solutions to a compensation problem. MASCoT is written in Java and can run on any platform as well as on the web. The software is free to use and distribute and can aid students and others interested in system control and compensation techniques and who wish to evaluate and design their own compensators.