MathWorks Offers Release 2018a

MathWorks introduced Release 2018a (R2018a) with a range of new capabilities in MATLAB and Simulink. R2018a includes two new products, Predictive Maintenance Toolbox for designing and testing condition monitoring and predictive maintenance algorithms, and Vehicle Dynamics Blocksetfor modeling and simulating vehicle dynamics in a virtual 3D environment. In addition to new features in MATLAB and Simulink, and the new products, this release also includes updates and bug fixes to 94 other products.

MATLAB product family updates include the following (and more):

MATLAB:

• Live functions, documentation authoring, debugging and interactive controls for embedding sliders and drop-down menus in the Live Editor
• App (UI) testing framework, C++ MEX interface, custom tab completion and function assistants for advanced software development

• Hardware connectivity for communicating with USB webcams

• Econometrics Toolbox: Econometric Modeler app for performing time series analysis, specification testing, modeling and diagnostics
• Image Processing Toolbox: 3D image processing and volume visualization

Deep Learning

Neural Network Toolbox:

• Support package for importing deep learning layers and networks designed in TensorFlow-Keras
• Long short-term memory (LSTM) networks for solving regression problems, and doing text classification with Text Analytics Toolbox
• Adam, RMSProp, and gradient clipping to improve network training
• Accelerated training for directed acyclic graph (DAG) networks using multiple GPUs and computing intermediate layer activations

• Image Labeler app to automate labeling of individual pixels for semantic segmentation

Data Analytics

Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox:

• High-density data visualization with scatter plots in the Classification Learner app
• Big data algorithms for kernel SVM regression, computing confusion matrices, and creating nonstratified partitions for cross-validation

• Multiword phrase extraction and counting, HTML text extraction, and detection of sentences, email addresses, and URLs
• Stochastic LDA model training for large datasets

Simulink:

• Predictive quick insert to connect a recommended block to an existing block in a model
• Simulation Pacing for running simulations at wall clock speed or other specified pace for improved visualization
• Simulation Data Inspector in the Live Editor for directly adding, viewing, and editing plots

• Collision detection for sensing collisions of virtual world objects using point clouds, raytracing, and primitive geometries

Automotive

Automated Driving System Toolbox:

• Driving Scenario Designer app for interactively defining actors and driving scenarios to test control and sensor fusion algorithms

• ADAS blocks for designing, simulating, and implementing adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping algorithms

• CAN FD protocol support in Simulink, and XCP over Ethernet to communicate with ECUs from MATLAB or Simulink

Verification and Validation

Simulink Requirements:

• Requirements import with ReqIF for importing requirements from third-party tools such as IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation or Siemens Polarion

• Coverage aggregation to combine coverage results from multiple test runs

For more information, visit MathWorks.

Sources: Press materials received from the company.