1. Supervisor: Arie Nakhmani Students: Eli Tsiben & Guy Dor Lederfein Semester: Spring 2011 Scilab - a good MATLAB alternative?

2. Contents  Background  Overall comparison Simulink vs. Xcos Interface with DAQ card Video Tracking  Conclusions  Future Development

3. MATLAB  Various uses in engineering, science, and economics  Matrices are the main data type  High cost  Closed source  Developed for over 30 years

4. Scilab  High-level, numerically oriented programming language.  Matrices are the main data type  Open source  ATOMS  Since 1990

5. Contents  Background  Overall comparison Simulink vs. Xcos Interface with DAQ card Video Tracking  Conclusions  Future Development

6. Simulink  Building a model is easy  Wide variety of blocks  Short execution time of simulation  Takes time to load  Easy to transfer variables

7. Xcos  Building a model is uncomfortable  Basic blocks  Long execution time of simulation  Not intuitive to transfer variables  Easy to add user-defined blocks  Loads quickly

8. Example 1 – “Auto Park” SimulinkXcos Execution Time (sec)79.4771820.969

9. Example 2 – “LQR state feedback + noise”  Different kinds of noise  Same results as MATLAB  Good computation time (3 sec)

10. Xcos - Conclusions  Suitable for small projects  GUI needs to be fixed  More blocks should be added

11. Contents  Background  Overall comparison Simulink vs. Xcos Interface with DAQ card Video Tracking  Conclusions  Future Development

12. MATLAB  Contains “Real-Time Windows Target”  DAQ card is fully supported by Simulink

13. Scilab  Currently not supported  DAQmx has a C API  Xcos can simply call C functions

14. DAQ card – conclusions  A toolbox for Scilab can easily be built  Scilab can be easily extended

15. Contents  Background  Overall comparison Simulink vs. Xcos Interface with DAQ card Video Tracking  Conclusions  Future Development

16. MATLAB  Good support for reading images/video  Full-Fledged Image Processing Toolbox

17. Scilab  Video reading support is experimental  SIVP – meant for video processing  SIP – still under development, difficult to install under windows  Image Processing Design Toolbox – good support under windows

18. SIVP advantages

19. Video Tracking - Conclusions  Currently not feasible under Scilab  Toolboxes need to be more mature  Development is currently under progress

20. Contents  Background  Overall comparison Simulink vs. Xcos Interface with DAQ card Video Tracking  Conclusions  Future Development

21. Overall Conclusions  Scilab can be used for homework exercises  Not yet developed enough for projects

22. Contents  Background  Overall comparison Simulink vs. Xcos Interface with DAQ card Video Tracking  Conclusions  Future Development

23. Future Development  Toolbox for DAQ card can be developed  Conversion script (from MATLAB) may be improved  Keep track of new toolboxes from ATOMS