A mixed symbolic - numeric software environment

Many control applications require the use of both symbolic and numeric computation. An illustrative example is the analysis and controller design of a mechanical system. To begin with, we need to compute the equations of motion. To study local stability we need to compute its linearization. To apply control concepts like feedback linearization we may need to compute the inverse system. All these operations are symbolic computations. To continue, we may want to do a computer simulation of the nonlinear system, study stability of the linearization at di erent operating points or try a nonlinear controller. These are numerical operations evaluating the symbolic objects obtained before.