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I'd like to share some work from Controls Educator and long term collabortor @Dr James E. Pickering from Harper Adams University. He is currently developing a teaching architecture for control engineering (ACE-CORE) and is looking for feedback from the engineering community.
ACE-CORE is delivered through ACE-Box, a modular hardware platform (Base + Sense, Actuate). More on the hardware here: What is the ACE-Box?
The Structure
(1) Comprehend
Learners build conceptual understanding of control systems by mapping block diagrams directly to physical components and signals. The emphasis is on:
- Feedback architecture
- Sensing and actuation
- Closed-loop behaviour in practical terms
(2) Operate
Using ACE-Box (initially Base + Sense), learners run real closed-loop systems. The learners measure, actuate, and observe real phenomena such as: Noise, Delay, Saturation
Engineering requirements (settling time, overshoot, steady-state error, etc.) are introduced explicitly at this stage.
After completing core activities (e.g., low-pass filter implementation or PID tuning), the pathway branches (see the attached diagram)
(3a) Refine (Option 1) Students improve performance through structured tuning:
- PID gains
- Filter coefficients
- Performance trade-offs
The focus is optimisation against defined engineering requirements.
(3b) Refine → Engineer (Option 2)
Modelling and analytical design become more explicit at this stage, including:
- Mathematical modelling
- Transfer functions
- System identification
- Stability analysis
- Analytical controller design
Why the Branching?
The structure reflects two realities:
- Engineers who operate and refine existing control systems
- Engineers who design control systems through mathematical modelling
Your perspective would be very valuable:
- Does this progression reflect industry reality?
- Is the branching structure meaningful?
- What blind spots do you see?
Constructive critique is very welcome. Thank you!
I was reading Yann Debray's recent post on automating documentation with agentic AI and ended up spending more time than expected in the comments section. Not because of the comments themselves, but because of something small I noticed while trying to write one. There is no writing assistance of any kind before you post. You type, you submit, and whatever you wrote is live.
For a lot of people that is fine. But MATLAB Central has users from all over the world, and I have seen questions on MATLAB Answers where the technical reasoning is clearly correct but the phrasing makes it hard to follow. The person knew exactly what they meant. The platform just did not help them say it clearly.
I want to share a few ideas around this. They are not fully formed proposals but I think the direction is worth discussing, especially given how much AI tooling MathWorks has built recently.
What the platform has today
When you write a post in Discussions or an answer in MATLAB Answers, the editor gives you basic formatting options. Code blocks, some text styling, that is mostly it. The AI Chat Playground exists as a separate tool, and MATLAB Copilot landed in R2025a for the desktop. But none of that is inside the editor where people actually write community content.
Four things are missing that I think would make a real difference.
Grammar and clarity checking before you post
Not a forced rewrite. Just an optional Check My Draft button that highlights unclear sentences or anything that might trip a reader up. The user reviews it, decides what to change, then posts.
What makes this different from plugging in Grammarly is that a general-purpose tool does not know that readtable is a MATLAB function. It does not know that NaN, inf, or linspace are not errors. A MATLAB-aware checker could flag things that generic tools miss, like someone writing readTable instead of readtable in a solution post.
The llms-with-matlab package already exists on GitHub. Something like this could be built on top of it with a prompt that includes MATLAB function vocabulary as context. That is not a large lift given what is already there.
Translation support
MATLAB Central already has a Japanese-language Discussions channel. That tells you something about the community. The platform is global but most of the technical content is in English, and there is a real gap there.
Two options that would help without being intrusive:
- Write in your language, click Translate, review the English version, then post. The user is still responsible for what goes live.
- A per-post Translate button so readers can view content in a language they are more comfortable with, without changing what is stored on the platform.
A student who has the right answer to a MATLAB Answers question might not post it because they are not confident writing in English. Translation support changes that. The community gets the answer and the contributor gets the credit.
In-editor code suggestions
When someone writes a solution post they usually write the code somewhere else, test it, copy it, paste it, and format it manually. An in-editor assistant that generates a starting scaffold from a plain-text description would cut that loop down.
The key word is scaffold, not a finished answer. The label should say something like AI-generated draft, verify before posting so it is clear the person writing is still accountable. MATLAB Copilot already does something close to this inside the desktop editor. Bringing a lighter version of it into the community editor feels like a natural extension of what already exists.
A note on feasibility
These ideas are not asking for something from scratch. MathWorks already has llms-with-matlab, the MCP Core Server, and MATLAB Copilot as infrastructure. Grammar checking and translation are well-solved problems at the API level. The MATLAB-specific vocabulary awareness is the part worth investing in. None of it should be on by default. All of it should be opt-in and clearly labeled when it runs.
One more thing: diagrams in posts
Right now the only way to include a diagram in a post is to make it externally and upload an image. A lightweight drag-and-drop diagram tool inside the editor would let people show a process or structure quickly without leaving the platform. Nothing complex, just boxes and arrows. For technical explanations it is often faster to draw than to write three paragraphs.
What I am curious about
I am a Data Science student at CU Boulder and an active MATLAB user. These ideas came up while using the platform, not from a product roadmap. I do not know what is already being discussed internally at MathWorks, so it is entirely possible some of this is in progress.
Has anyone else run into the same friction points when writing on MATLAB Central? And for anyone at MathWorks who works on the community platform, is the editor something that gets investment alongside the product tools?
Happy to hear where I am wrong on the feasibility side too.
AI assisted with grammar and framing. All ideas and editorial decisions are my own.
I wanted to share something I've been thinking about to get your reactions. We all know that most MATLAB users are engineers and scientists, using MATLAB to do engineering and science. Of course, some users are professional software developers who build professional software with MATLAB - either MATLAB-based tools for engineers and scientists, or production software with MATLAB Coder, MATLAB Compiler, or MATLAB Web App Server.
I've spent years puzzling about the very large grey area in between - engineers and scientists who build useful-enough stuff in MATLAB that they want their code to work tomorrow, on somebody else's machine, or maybe for a large number of users. My colleagues and I have taken to calling them "Reluctant Developers". I say "them", but I am 1,000% a reluctant developer.
I first hit this problem while working on my Mech Eng Ph.D. in the late 90s. I built some elaborate MATLAB-based tools to run experiments and analysis in our lab. Several of us relied on them day in and day out. I don't think I was out in the real world for more than a month before my advisor pinged me because my software stopped working. And so began a career of building amazing, useful, and wildly unreliable tools for other MATLAB users.
About a decade ago I noticed that people kept trying to nudge me along - "you should really write tests", "why aren't you using source control". I ignored them. These are things software developers do, and I'm an engineer.
I think it finally clicked for me when I listened to a talk at a MATLAB Expo around 2017. An aerospace engineer gave a talk on how his team had adopted git-based workflows for developing flight control algorithms. An attendee asked "how do you have time to do engineering with all this extra time spent using software development tools like git"? The response was something to the effect of "oh, we actually have more time to do engineering. We've eliminated all of the waste from our unamanaged processes, like multiple people making similar updates or losing track of the best version of an algorithm." I still didn't adopt better practices, but at least I started to get a sense of why I might.
Fast-forward to today. I know lots of users who've picked up software dev tools like they are no big deal, but I know lots more who are still holding onto their ad-hoc workflows as long as they can. I'm on a bit of a campaign to try to change this. I'd like to help MATLAB users recognize when they have problems that are best solved by borrowing tools from our software developer friends, and then give a gentle onramp to using these tools with MATLAB.
I recently published this guide as a start:
Waddya think? Does the idea of Reluctant Developer resonate with you? If you take some time to read the guide, I'd love comments here or give suggestions by creating Issues on the guide on GitHub (there I go, sneaking in some software dev stuff ...)
DocMaker allows you to create MATLAB toolbox documentation from Markdown documents and MATLAB scripts.
The MathWorks Consulting group have been using it for a while now, and so David Sampson, the director of Application Engineering, felt that it was time to share it with the MATLAB and Simulink community.
David listed its features as:
➡️ write documentation in Markdown not HTML
🏃 run MATLAB code and insert textual and graphical output
📜 no more hand writing XML index files
🕸️ generate documentation for any release from R2021a onwards
💻 view and edit documentation in MATLAB, VS Code, GitHub, GitLab, ...
🎉 automate toolbox documentation generation using MATLAB build tool
📃 fully documented using itself
😎 supports light, dark, and responsive modes
🐣 cute logo
I got an email message that says all the files I've uploaded to the File Exchange will be given unique names. Are these new names being applied to my files automatically? If so, do I need to download them to get versions with the new name so that if I update them they'll have the new name instead of the name I'm using now?
Currently, the open-source MATLAB Community is accessed via the desktop web interface, and the experience on mobile devices is not very good—especially switching between sections like Discussion, FEX, Answers, and Cody is awkward. Having a dedicated app would make using the community much more convenient on phones.
Similarty,github has Mobile APP, It's convient for me.
https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/2182045-why-can-t-i-renew-or-purchase-add-ons-for-m…
"As of January 1, 2026, Perpetual Student and Home offerings have been sunset and replaced with new Annual Subscription Student and Home offerings."
So, Perpetual licenses for Student and Home versions are no more. Also, the ability for Student and Home to license just MATLAB by itself has been removed.
The new offering for Students is $US119 per year with no possibility of renewing through a Software Maintenance Service type offering. That $US119 covers the Student Suite of MATLAB and Simulink and 11 other toolboxes. Before, the perpetual license was $US99... and was a perpetual license, so if (for example) you bought it in second year you could use it in third and fourth year for no additional cost. $US99 once, or $US99 + $US35*2 = $US169 (if you took SMS for 2 years) has now been replaced by $US119 * 3 = $US357 (assuming 3 years use.)
The new offering for Home is $US165 per year for the Suite (MATLAB + 12 common toolboxes.) This is a less expensive than the previous $US150 + $US49 per toolbox if you had a use for those toolboxes . Except the previous price was a perpetual license. It seems to me to be more likely that Home users would have a use for the license for extended periods, compared to the Student license (Student licenses were perpetual licenses but were only valid while you were enrolled in degree granting instituations.)
Unfortunately, I do not presently recall the (former) price for SMS for the Home license. It might be the case that by the time you added up SMS for base MATLAB and the 12 toolboxes, that you were pretty much approaching $US165 per year anyhow... if you needed those toolboxes and were willing to pay for SMS.
But any way you look at it, the price for the Student version has effectively gone way up. I think this is a bad move, that will discourage students from purchasing MATLAB in any given year, unless they need it for courses. No (well, not much) more students buying MATLAB with the intent to explore it, knowing that it would still be available to them when it came time for their courses.
I struggle with animations. I often want a simple scrollable animation and wind up having to export to some external viewer in some supported format. The new Live Script automation of animations fails and sabotages other methods and it is not well documented so even AIs are clueless how to resolve issues. Often an animation works natively but not with MATLAB Online. Animation of results seems to me rather basic and should be easier!
Frequently, I find myself doing things like the following,
xyz=rand(100,3);
XYZ=num2cell(xyz,1);
scatter3(XYZ{:,1:3})
But num2cell is time-consuming, not to mention that requiring it means extra lines of code. Is there any reason not to enable this syntax,
scatter3(xyz{:,1:3})
so that I one doesn't have to go through num2cell? Here, I adopt the rule that only dimensions that are not ':' will be comma-expanded.
(Requested for newer MATLAB releases (e.g. R2026B), MATLAB Parallel Processing toolbox.)
Lower precision array types have been gaining more popularity over the years for deep learning. The current lowest precision built-in array type offered by MATLAB are 8-bit precision arrays, e.g. int8 and uint8. A good thing is that these 8-bit array types do have gpuArray support, meaning that one is able to design GPU MEX codes that take in these 8-bit arrays and reinterpret them bit-wise as other 8-bit array types, e.g. FP8, which is especially common array type used in modern day deep learning applications. I myself have used this to develop forward pass operations with 8-bit precision that are around twice as fast as 16-bit operations and with output arrays that still agree well with 16-bit outputs (measured with high cosine similarity). So the 8-bit support that MATLAB offers is already quite sufficient.
Recently, 4-bit precision array types have been shown also capable of being very useful in deep learning. These array types can be processed with Tensor Cores of more modern GPUs, such as NVIDIA's Blackwell architecture. However, MATLAB does not yet have a built-in 4-bit precision array type.
Just like MATLAB has int8 and uint8, both also with gpuArray support, it would also be nice to have MATLAB have int4 and uint4, also with gpuArray support.
The Cody Contest 2025 has officially wrapped up! Over the past 4 weeks, more than 700 players submitted over 20,000 solutions. In addition, participants shared 20+ high-quality Tips & Tricksarticles—resources that will benefit Cody users for years to come.
Now it’s time to announce the winners.
🎉 Week 4 winners:
Weekly Prizes for Contest Problem Group Finishers:
@JKMSMKJ, @Yu Zhang, @Oliver Jaros, @Pauli Huusari, @Karl, @Marcos Silveira, @goc3, @Ildeberto de los Santos Ruiz, @Norberto, @Eric
Weekly Prizes for Contest Problem Group Solvers:
Weekly Prizes for Tips & Tricks Articles:
This week’s prize goes to @WANG Zi-Xiang. See the comments from our judge and problem group author @Matt Tearle:
‘We had a lot of great tips for solving Cody problems in general and the contest problems specifically. But we all know there are those among us who, having solved the problem, still want to tinker and make their code better. There are different definitions of "better", but code size remains the base metric in Cody. Enter Wang Zi-Xiang who compiled a list of many tips for reducing Cody size. This post also generated some great discussion (even prompting our insane autocrat, Lord Ned himself, to chime in). I particularly like the way that, while reducing Cody size often requires some arcane tricks that would normally be considered bad coding practice, the intellectual activity of trying to "game the system" makes you consider different programming approaches, and sometimes leads you to learn corners of MATLAB that you didn't know.’
🏆 Grand Prizes for the Main Round
Team Relentless Coders:
2nd Place: @Roberto
Team Creative Coders:
Team Cool Coders
Congratulations to all! Securing a top position on the leaderboard requires not only advanced MATLAB skills but also determination and consistency throughout the four-week contest. You will receive Amazon gift cards.
🥇 Winning Team
The competition was incredibly tight—we even had to use the tie-breaker rule.
Both Team Cool Coders and Team Relentless Coders achieved 16 contest group finishers. However, the last finisher on Cool Coders completed the problem group at 1:02 PM on Dec 7, while the last finisher on Relentless Coders finished at 9:47 PM the same day.
Such a close finish! Congratulations to Team Cool Coders, who have earned the Winning Team Finishers badge.
🎬 Bonus Round
Invitations have been sent to the 6 players who qualified for the Bonus Round. Stay tuned for updates—including the Big Watch Party afterward!
Congratulations again to all winners! We’ll be reaching out after the contest ends. It has been an exciting, rewarding, and knowledge-packed journey.
See you next year!
Our exportgraphics and copygraphics functions now offer direct and intuitive control over the size, padding, and aspect ratio of your exported figures.
- Specify Output Size: Use the new Width, Height, and Units name-value pairs
- Control Padding: Easily adjust the space around your axes using the Padding argument, or set it to to match the onscreen appearance.
- Preserve Aspect Ratio: Use PreserveAspectRatio='on' to maintain the original plot proportions when specifying a fixed size.
- SVG Export: The exportgraphics function now supports exporting to the SVG file format.
Check out the full article on the Graphics and App Building blog for examples and details: Advanced Control of Size and Layout of Exported Graphics
No, staying home (or where I'm now)
25%
Yes, 1 night
0%
Yes, 2 nights
12.5%
Yes, 3 nights
12.5%
Yes, 4-7 nights
25%
Yes, 8 nights or more
25%
8 votes
Over the past three weeks, players have been having great fun solving problems, sharing knowledge, and connecting with each other. Did you know over 15,000 solutions have already been submitted?
This is the final week to solve Cody problems and climb the leaderboard in the main round. Remember: solving just one problem in the contest problem group gives you a chance to win MathWorks T-shirts or socks.
🎉 Week 3 Winners:
Weekly Prizes for Contest Problem Group Finishers:
@Umar, @David Hill, @Takumi, @Nicolas, @WANG Zi-Xiang, @Rajvir Singh Gangar, @Roberto, @Boldizsar, @Abi, @Antonio
Weekly Prizes for Contest Problem Group Solvers:
Weekly Prizes for Tips & Tricks Articles:
This week’s prize goes to @Cephas. See the comments from our judge and problem group author @Matt Tearle:
'Some folks have posted deep dives into how to tackle specific problems in the contest set. But others have shared multiple smaller, generally useful tips. This week, I want to congratulate the cumulative contribution of Cool Coder Cephas, who has shared several of my favorite MATLAB techniques, including logical indexing, preallocation, modular arithmetic, and more. Cephas has also given some tips applying these MATLAB techniques to specific contest problems, such as using a convenient MATLAB function to vectorize the Leaderboard problem. Tip for Problem 61059 – Leaderboard for the Nedball World Cup:'
Congratulations to all Week 3 winners! Let’s carry this momentum into the final week!
Hello everyone,
My name is heavnely, studying Aerospace Enginerring in IIT Kharagpur. I'm trying to meet people that can help to explore about things in control systems, drones, UAV, Reseearch. I have started wrting papers an year ago and hopefully it is going fine. I hope someone would reply to reply to this messege.
Thank you so much for anyone who read my messege.
In just two weeks, the competition has become both intense and friendly as participants race to climb the team leaderboard, especially in Team Creative, where @Mehdi Dehghan currently leads with 1400+ points, followed by @Vasilis Bellos with 900+ points.
There’s still plenty of time to participate before the contest's main round ends on December 7. Solving just one problem in the contest problem group gives you a chance to win MathWorks T-shirts or socks. Completing the entire problem group not only boosts your odds but also helps your team win.
🎉 Week 2 Winners:
Weekly Prizes for Contest Problem Group Finishers:
@Cephas, @Athi, @Bin Jiang, @Armando Longobardi, @Simone, @Maxi, @Pietro, @Hong Son, @Salvatore, @KARUPPASAMYPANDIYAN M
Weekly Prizes for Contest Problem Group Solvers:
Weekly Prizes for Tips & Tricks Articles:
This week’s prize goes to @Athi for the highly detailed post Solving Systematically The Clueless - Lord Ned in the Game Room.
Comment from the judge:
Shortly after the problem set dropped, several folks recognized that the final problem, "Clueless", was a step above the rest in difficulty. So, not surprisingly, there were a few posts in the discussion boards related to how to tackle this problem. Athi, of the Cool Coders, really dug deep into how the rules and strategies could be turned into an algorithm. There's always more than one way to tackle any difficult programming problem, so it was nice to see some discussion in the comments on different ways you can structure the array that represents your knowledge of who has which cards.
Congratulations to all Week 2 winners! Let’s keep the momentum going!
Developing an application in MATLAB often feels like a natural choice: it offers a unified environment, powerful visualization tools, accessible syntax, and a robust technical ecosystem. But when the goal is to build a compilable, distributable app, the path becomes unexpectedly difficult if your workflow depends on symbolic functions like sym, zeta, or lambertw.
This isn’t a minor technical inconvenience—it’s a structural contradiction. MATLAB encourages the creation of graphical interfaces, input validation, and dynamic visualization. It even provides an Application Compiler to package your code. But the moment you invoke sym, the compiler fails. No clear warning. No workaround. Just: you cannot compile. The same applies to zeta and lambertw, which rely on the symbolic toolbox.
So we’re left asking: how can a platform designed for scientific and technical applications block compilation of functions that are central to those very disciplines?
What Are the Alternatives?
- Rewrite everything numerically, avoiding symbolic logic—often impractical for advanced mathematical workflows.
- Use partial workarounds like matlabFunction, which may work but rarely preserve the original logic or flexibility.
- Switch platforms (e.g., Python with SymPy, Julia), which means rebuilding the architecture and leaving behind MATLAB’s ecosystem.
So, Is MATLAB Still Worth It?
That’s the real question. MATLAB remains a powerful tool for prototyping, teaching, analysis, and visualization. But when it comes to building compilable apps that rely on symbolic computation, the platform imposes limits that contradict its promise.
Is it worth investing time in a MATLAB app if you can’t compile it due to essential mathematical functions? Should MathWorks address this contradiction? Or is it time to rethink our tools?
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Is MATLAB still worth it for serious application development?
In just one week, we have hit an amazing milestone: 500+ players registered and 5000+ solutions submitted! We’ve also seen fantastic Tips & Tricks articles rolling in, making this contest a true community learning experience.
And here’s the best part: you don’t need to be a top-ranked player to win. To encourage more casual and first-time players to jump in, we’re introducing new weekly prizes starting Week 2!
New Casual Player Prizes:
- 5 extra MathWorks T-shirts or socks will be awarded every week.
- All you need to qualify is to register and solve one problem in the Contest Problem Group.
Jump in, try a few problems, and don’t be shy to ask questions in your team’s channel. You might walk away with a prize!
Week 1 Winners:
Weekly Prizes for Contest Problem Group Finishers:
@Mazhar, @Julien, @Mohammad Aryayi, @Pawel, @Mehdi Dehghan, @Christian Schröder, @Yolanda, @Dev Gupta, @Tomoaki Takagi, @Stefan Abendroth
Weekly Prizes for Tips & Tricks Articles:
We had a lot of people share useful tips (including some personal favorite MATLAB tricks). But Vasilis Bellos went *deep* into the Bridges of Nedsburg problem. Fittingly for a Creative Coder, his post was innovative and entertaining, while also cleverly sneaking in some hints on a neat solution method that wasn't advertised in the problem description.
Congratulations to all Week 1 winners! Prizes will be awarded after the contest ends. Let’s keep the momentum going!
What a fantastic start to Cody Contest 2025! In just 2 days, over 300 players joined the fun, and we already have our first contest group finishers. A big shoutout to the first finisher from each team:
- Team Creative Coders: @Mehdi Dehghan
- Team Cool Coders: @Pawel
- Team Relentless Coders: @David Hill
- 🏆 First finisher overall: Mehdi Dehghan
Other group finishers: @Bin Jiang (Relentless), @Mazhar (Creative), @Vasilis Bellos (Creative), @Stefan Abendroth (Creative), @Armando Longobardi (Cool), @Cephas (Cool)
Kudos to all group finishers! 🎉
Reminder to finishers: The goal of Cody Contest is learning together. Share hints (not full solutions) to help your teammates complete the problem group. The winning team will be the one with the most group finishers — teamwork matters!
To all players: Don’t be shy about asking for help! When you do, show your work — include your code, error messages, and any details needed for others to reproduce your results.
Keep solving, keep sharing, and most importantly — have fun!
Title: Looking for Internship Guidance as a Beginner MATLAB/Simulink Learner
Hello everyone,
I’m a Computer Science undergraduate currently building a strong foundation in MATLAB and Simulink. I’m still at a beginner level, but I’m actively learning every day and can work confidently once I understand the concepts. Right now I’m focusing on MATLAB modeling, physics simulation, and basic control systems so that I can contribute effectively to my current project.
I’m part of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) team preparing for the Singapore AUV Challenge (SAUVC). My role is in physics simulation, controls, and navigation, and MATLAB/Simulink plays a major role in that pipeline. I enjoy physics and mathematics deeply, which makes learning modeling and simulation very exciting for me.
On the coding side, I practice competitive programming regularly—
• Codeforces rating: ~1200
• LeetCode rating: ~1500
So I'm comfortable with logic-building and problem solving. What I’m looking for:
I want to know how a beginner like me can start applying for internships related to MATLAB, Simulink, modeling, simulation, or any engineering team where MATLAB is widely used (including companies outside MathWorks).
I would really appreciate advice from the community on:
- What skills should I strengthen first?
- Which MATLAB/Simulink toolboxes are most important for beginners aiming toward simulation/control roles?
- What small projects or portfolio examples should I build to improve my profile?
- What is the best roadmap to eventually become a good candidate for internships in this area?
Any guidance, resources, or suggestions would be extremely helpful for me.
Thank you in advance to everyone who shares their experience!
