CACHE: An Interactive Control System Analysis and Design Package

CACHE is an interactive control engineering educational software package implemented on a personal computer workstation. The objective of this paper is to highlight the features of CACHE. CACHE provides undergraduate and graduate control engineering students with a comprehensive set of computational and graphics tools incorporating both classical and modern control engineering methodologies. The paper describes the menu-driven hierarchical command structure and the functions of the three CACHE subsystems: database manager, calculator, and plotter. The database manager maintains both state-space and frequency-domain transfer function models of linear time-invariant physical systems. CACHE includes analysis and design tools for both continuous-time and discrete-time systems. The application of CACHE is illustrated through the design of a position servomechanism.