getting real time values from distance sensor arduino

For a Bachelor Project at the TU delft we're making a model in simulink in which the DC-motors of a ship are modelled in such a way that they respond to the distance the ship has to a ship in front of it. We wrote a code in Matlab which receives distance values from an arduino UNO using the serial and sscanf commands. However this gives us the distances from a defined time frame which is not real-time. Can anybody tell us how we should change the code to get a continuous flow of real-time distances from the sensor which we can then link to simulink?

The code looks as following:

if true
clear all
clc
delete(instrfindall);
arduino=serial('COM3');
set(arduino,'BaudRate',9600);
fopen(arduino);
fgetl(arduino);     %flush out any partial line in the buffer 
for i=1:L
   thisline = fgetl(arduino); %Read line from file, discard newline character.
      if strcmpi(thisline, 'Out of Range')
        fprintf('Out of Range reported at point #%d\n', i) %format and display data
        y(i) = nan;   
      else
        thisdist = sscanf(thisline, '%f');%Read data from matlab variable thisline
        if isempty(thisdist)
          fprintf('Unexpected response at point #%d; line was: "%s"\n', i, thisline);
         y(i) = nan;
        else
          if length(thisdist) > 1
            fprintf('Multiple distances reported for point #%d, using first; line was "%s"\n', i, thisline);
          end
          y(i) = thisdist(1);
        end
      end
  pause(0.05);
end% code
end
fclose(arduino);
disp('making plot..')
plot(x,y);

[Jayanta Deb]

Hi, I dont know if the problem was solved. In my opinion, if I understood it correct, You need to get a continuous flow from a distance sensor without running the matlab script manually everytime? So I think you need to put it in a while loop and continue the whole program.

for x = round((2-1).*rand(1) + 1) while (x<3) . . . end end

* further you need to modify the code in such a way that the sensor gets prepare for once so as to you don't have to make the arduino get ready each time and you get closer to real time more efficiently. Try to write the "get ready" matlab code to run before the loop begins.

Regards, J