Installation¶

Additional Software¶

These packages aren’t included in the ET distribution. So, you need to download them separately.

CVX¶

Some methods of the Ellipsoidal Toolbox, namely,

distance
intersect
isInside
doesContain
ellintersection_ia
ellunion_ea

require solving semidefinite programming (SDP) problems. We use CVX [CVXHP] as an interface to an external SDP solver. CVX is a reliable toolbox for solving SDP problems of high dimensionality. CVX is implemented in Matlab, effectively turning Matlab into an optimization modeling language. Model specifications are constructed using common Matlab operations and functions, and standard Matlab code can be freely mixed with these specifications. This combination makes it simple to perform the calculations needed to form optimization problems, or to process the results obtained from their solution. CVX distribution includes two freeware solvers: SeDuMi ([STUR1999], [SDMHP]) and SDPT3 [SDPT3HP]. The default solver used in the toolbox is SeDuMi.

MPT¶

Multi-Parametric Toolbox [MPTHP] - a Matlab toolbox for multi-parametric optimization and computational geometry. MPT is a toolbox that defines polytope class used in ET. We need MPT for the following methods operating with polytopes.

distance
intersect
intersection_ia
intersection_ea
isInside
hyperplane2polytope
polytope2hyperplane

Installation and Quick Start¶

Go to http://code.google.com/p/ellipsoids and download the Ellipsoidal Toolbox.
Unzip the distribution file into the directory where you would like the toolbox to be.
Unzip CVX into cvx folder next to products folder.
Unzip MPT into mpt folder next to products folder.
Read the copyright notice.
In MATLAB command window change the working directory to the one where you unzipped the toolbox and type

s_install

At this point, the directory tree of the Ellipsoidal Toolbox is added to the MATLAB path list. In order to save the updated path list, in your MATLAB window menu go to File $\rightarrow$ Set Path... and click Save.
To get an idea of what the toolbox is about, type

ell_demo1

This will produce a demo of basic ET functionality: how to create and manipulate ellipsoids.

Type

 ell_demo2

to learn how to plot ellipsoids and hyperplanes in 2 and 3D. For a quick tutorial on how to use the toolbox for reachability analysis and verification, type