Is it possible to send commands to Arduino through WiFi?

I have an Arduino Uno R3 with a SparkFun ESP8266 WiFi Shield attached to it. I need Matlab to send commands to Arduino to do some tasks, but I need to do this wirelessly (through WiFi). Currently, the WiFi shield is connected to my network. My question: is it possible for Matlab to access the local WiFi network and send commands to Arduino through this network? I need to do this without using the Matlab's package for Arduino (it doesn't do what I need it to do). Thanks

Answer 1

[Jason Whitfield]

You should be able to run a tcp server on the Arduino and connect to it using MATLAB. See https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/import_export/create-a-tcpip-connection.html. Once the connection is established, you should be able to read and write data as if it were a serial connection.

[David Zamora]

Thank you Mr. Whitfield!