I'm attempting to get something to perform only for a certain amount of time. Is there a function for this?

I'm trying to get part of my program to execute for only half a second. I have the following code..

case 'backward'
          display('Going Backwards')
          Portarduino.analogWrite(rspeed,50);
          Portarduino.analogWrite(lspeed,50);
          Portarduino.digitalWrite(rdir,1);
          Portarduino.digitalWrite(ldir,1);
          pause(0.00001)
          robotstatus='mainloop'

And I only want this to perform for .5 seconds. Can someone give me some guidance? Thank you!

[Ced]

Have you tried using tic and toc? I don't have the hardware, so I can't check, but I could image that something like this might work:

% --> Get command to drive backwards for 5 seconds
display('Going Backwards')
tic
while ( toc < 5 )
    Portarduino.analogWrite(rspeed,50);
    Portarduino.analogWrite(lspeed,50);
    Portarduino.digitalWrite(rdir,1);
    Portarduino.digitalWrite(ldir,1);
    pause(0.00001)
    robotstatus='mainloop'
end

PS: What is the sampling rate of your Arduino? 0.00001 seems unnecessarily fast to me.

[Jaime Juarez]

This happened to work once I made the pause, slower. Thank you so much!