ECSTASY (Environment for Control System Theory, Analysis and SYnthesis) was funded by SERC's Control and Instrumentation Sub-Committee via the Computing and Design Techniques for Control Engineering (CDTCE) Management Committee. ECSTASY had two aims: to provide a common interface to well established packages in the area, such as ACSL and ProMatLab and to provide a system in which new control algorithms could be developed. The common front end approach meant that control engineers would not have to learn a new interface to use a new package while a common environment for new developments meant that the results of such developments could be easily transferred to other researchers and to industry.
In 1986, a survey of available control systems developed by academic groups and commercial offerings was undertaken. The conclusion was that none met the requirements although many had features that were needed in a control environment. The decision was made to write the new environment in C with the target being either SUN-3 workstations or VAX systems.
An early version of ECSTASY was released to sites in 1988.
The basic environment was developed at UMIST's Control Systems Centre with a block diagram editor provided by University College, Swansea. RAL's role was to provide management and technical support, and test the system. RAL also interfaced the TSIM simulation package to ECSTASY. RAL organised two rounds of beta testing. The second beta test took place in 1989 . This was a 3 month evaluation by 4 academic institutions in collaboration with some industrial partners.
The main people involved at RAL were Damian Mac Randall and Keith Dancey.
