9 Connecting to an external MATLAB process

In addition to being able to run ArtiSynth from within MATLAB, it is also possible to create a connection between ArtiSynth and an externally running MATLAB program. Data can then be passed back and forth between ArtiSynth and MATLAB. This can be particularly useful if it turns out to be unfeasible to run ArtiSynth directly under MATLAB.

Caveat: The MATLAB connection uses the matlabcontrol interface, by Joshua Kaplan. It relies on the undocumented Java MATLAB Interface, and hence cannot be guaranteed to work with future versions of MATLAB.

An external MATLAB connection can be opened in any of the following ways:

1. 1.

   Choosing File > Open MATLAB Connection in the GUI;

2. 2.

   Specifying the option -openMatlabConnection on the command line;

3. 3.

   Calling the openMatlabConnection() method in the Main class (see Section 10).

When a MATLAB connection is requested, the system will first attempt to connect to a MATLAB process running on the user’s machine. If no zsuch process is found, then a new MATLAB process will be started. If a MATLAB connection is opened when ArtiSynth is being run under MATLAB, then the connection will be made to the parent MATLAB process.

Once a connection is open, it is possible to save/load probe data to/from MATLAB. This can be done by selecting the probe and then choosing either Save to MATLAB or Load from MATLAB in the right-click context menu. This will cause the probe data to be saved to (or loaded from) a MATLAB array. The name of the MATLAB array is determined by NumericProbeBase.getMatlabName(), which returns either

1. 1.

   The name of the probe, if not null, or

2. 2.

   "iprobe<n>" (for input probes) or "oprobe<n>" (for output probes), where <n> is the probe number.

It is also possible to save/load probe data to/from MATLAB using the following functions available in ArtiSynth’s Jython interface (see the section “Jython Interaction and Scripting” in the User Interface Guide):

iprobeToMatlab() and iprobeFromMatlab() save/load data for the input probe specified by probeName to/from the MATLAB variable with the name matlabName. probeName is a string giving either the probe’s name or number. If matlabName is absent, then the value of NumericProbeBase.getMatlabName() (described above) is used. The functions oprobeToMatlab() and oprobeFromMatlab() do the same thing for output probes.