Toolbox

Overview

Generally the experience of researchers and engineers is that, even if they find algorithms in a book to be attractive for their work, the effort required translating the algorithms into working codes need substantial effort. This endeavor (time and financial) may at times dampen the enthusiasm to explore new concepts / algorithms.

A MATLAB based Toolbox, the ESCORT (EigenStructure COntrol Research Toolbox) software is primarily developed to alleviate this additional concern and to encourage engineers to explore the design concepts, proposed in the Book ‘Eigenstructure Control Algorithms’, for multivariable flight control system synthesis. The toolbox for MATLAB consists of a set of functions that have been written to implement all the algorithms detailed in chapters 1 to 7 in the book. Further, driver programs have been written to recreate the numerical examples results illustrated in the book (chapters 1 to 7). In addition these driver programs serve as templates for the user to adapt them for their applications as well. Aircraft and Rotorcraft state variable models have been included to help the user to reconstruct the results in the flight control application chapters (chapters 9 to 11). Additional flight control design test cases have been included to illustrate the special features of eigenstructure assignment using different controller structures such as state feedback, output feedback, dynamic feedback, functional observer based design, robust design and implicit & explicit model following controller design etc.

Toolbox upload / Feedback

ESCORT software is available for free. Submit the form below to receive instructions on how to download the software:

PLEASE NOTE: YOU WILL ONLY RECEIVE THE SOFTWARE/RECEIVE A REPLY IF THIS IS AN AUTHENTIC REQUEST. The request must be from a qualified student or educator.

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    The software is uploaded as a zip file (ESCORT.v*.zip). After extracting the zip file, a program setup_ESCORT in the root directory of ESCORT will facilitate setting up the software in the MATLAB environment:

    Software Documentation

    The file ‘ESCORT Documentation’ in the root directory of ESCORT provides basic layout of the file structure of the software and description of MATLAB algorithm functions. All MATLAB algorithm functions have a help file giving a brief description of the program, its usage and input/output parameter lists. These have been included in the folder: ESCORT\HELP_FILES. The information about these functions can also be invoked from the MATLAB command window.

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    Software Support

    The software has undergone reasonable stress testing. If genuine bugs still persist, effort will be made to fix them. But no guarantees can be given. However, since the source code is available, if the user proposes a fix, his contribution will be duly acknowledged in the next release of the software.