Web-Based MATHEMATICA Platform for Systems and Controls Education

Computer algebra software tools in general, and the MATHEMATICA system in particular, are increasingly employed during the controls and systems graduate and undergraduate courses at FEE CTU in Prague. MATHEMATICA benefits from its high-level user interface, graphical abilities, as well as numerical and symbolic computational power and dedicated packages for control systems analysts and design (control systems professional and advanced numerical methods). In addition, MATHEMATICA provides a Web-based platform for publication of results and presenting user-callable routines (webMATHEMATICA). In the Czech Republic a project financed by the Ministry of Education and called PUMA (power user mathematic array) has been started recently, focused on creation of Web-accessible software tools to support education at technical universities. The authors have been involved in these efforts and would like to contribute by creating a Web site based on webMATHEMATICA dedicated to numerical and symbolic computations for systems and controls. This paper is the first report on this topic. The work is in rapid progress now and the paper summarizes the authors´ plans and first results