Background

This is a MATLAB version of AUTO, where we have integrated AUTO into MATLAB via mex functions. The toolbox was developed with the engineering community in mind, especially in the context of popular engineering tools. We are currently adding more engineering examples that will be available with the next release. We hope that it would be useful teaching tool and can help popularise the methods.

Feel free to develop some examples for us for inclusion into the toolbox. There are template files that you can use for inclusion of your own examples.

Authors

This toolbox was written by Etienne Coetzee, Phani Thota and James Rankin. Obviously, credit must also be given to the authors of AUTO, Esebius Doedel et al.

Main features

• Look and feel of MATLAB.
• Extensive use of objects.
• Can be run in the new mode, or still with all the old AUTO files (.c,.7,.8.9) familiar to the user.
• Robust error checking.
• Additional outputs can be detected and also passed out to MATLAB variables.
• Any of the MATLAB toolsets can be used, i.e. the Symbolic toolbox, Simulink etc.
• Similar notations to that of AUTO. A person familiar with AUTO should find it straightforward to pick up the new toolsets.
• Also works with the student version of MATLAB.
• Ample documentation.
• Templates files for people willing to contribute their own examples for inclusion into the demos.

Drawbacks

• Limit Cycles are at least an order of magnitude slower. We had to make a trade-off between robustness and speed. We therefore decided that if we want to popularise the methods, then the code should work, and people should not have to struggle with decoding it.
• No ample engineering examples yet.
• Plotting routines are basic and still contain bugs.

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