Technology & Engineers Celebrated at NIWeek 2009

 

By Bill Lydon - Contributing Editor

 

Embracing “Engineering Grand Challenges”

August 4-6, Austin, Texas

 

Dr. James Truchard opened the conference by describing National Instruments’ technical directions and thanking attendees for taking on new challenges by innovating and solving problems. By citing a Business Week article, “The Failed Promise of Innovation in the U.S.,” Dr. Truchard punctuated his comments that the United States is not creating innovative products that the rest of the world wants to buy. Dr. Truchard acknowledged that the attendees are an exception, as illustrated by the new products and solutions created by users and showcased at NI Week. He discussed how solutions addressed the National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges and noted that we “desperately need more innovation” to create solutions.

 

Dr. James Truchard has served as CEO of National Instruments for 33 years.

 

NIWeek 2009 attendance was up over last year and that alone is a significant statement compared with other conferences this year. It was billed as the Worldwide Graphical System Design conference providing three days of over 200 interactive technical sessions, exhibitions, and hands-on workshops on the technologies for control, design, measurement, automation, manufacturing, and test. 

 

National Instruments continues to expand offerings for a wide range of applications with initiatives including motion/mechantronics, vision, and industrial control. The core technology developed is deployed in a range of industries with “no industry greater that 15% of revenue.” Of particular interest was National Instruments' developments that allow users to exploit multi-core processors using visual programming.

 

 

 

National Instruments, in my opinion, is one of the few United Stated companies organized for success as a technological innovator that delivers a broad line of problem-solving products. The company is committed to technological development with a 2009 R&D headcount goal of approximately 1,500 people and the company has consistently allocated more than 15% of revenue to R&D. The company is well positioned with over $200 million in cash reserves giving it the flexibility to weather business cycles. Sounds like good engineering to me…like designing a control system to handle worst case scenarios.

 

National Instruments meets one of my tests of a successful technology company because the top executives understand the technology and applications. This is in sharp contrast to many U.S. “technology” companies where the top executive’s knowledge ends at the company’s financial ratios and stock price. I believe that poor management in many other companies is a big part of the U.S. innovation problem.

 

In addition to focusing on their own business, National Instruments is contributing time, talent, and resources to motivate students to get involved and learn about careers in technology.  NI takes this seriously with a Vice President of Academic Relations position held by Ray Almgren with 21 years of NI experience. National Instruments stated commitment is to enhance education by collaborating with leaders in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programs to meet the changing needs of today's students and educators. The company provides discounts on products for educators to introduce students to STEM concepts in a fun and engaging way through hands-on, project-based learning.

 

At the conference, a number of student projects were showcased that developed impressive solutions to problems. The Mashavu Project (www.mashavu.com) was particularly compelling.  Penn State students have developed and field tested an innovative system to remotely capture medical information from people in developing countries, Tanzania and Kenya. There is one doctor for every 50,000 people in East Africa compared to one doctor for every 390 people in the United States.   They leveraged the fact that 97% of the people have access to a cell phone and computers are available in communities. The students developed sensors for weight, thermometer, spirometer, pulse rate, stethoscope, and blood pressure using off the shelf technology that have an average cost of $9.84 each. Video of Mashavu presentation.

 

NI has really become involved in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) organization. Dean Kamen is the Founder of the organization which has a vision, "To transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes." The stated mission of the organization is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering, and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.

 

The FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is a major event that is a unique “varsity sport of the mind” designed to help high-school-aged young people discover how interesting and rewarding the life of engineers and researchers can be. The FIRST Robotics Competition challenges teams of young people and their mentors to solve a common problem in a six-week timeframe using a standard "kit of parts" and a common set of rules. Teams build robots from the parts and enter them in competitions designed by Dean Kamen, Dr. Woodie Flowers, and a committee of engineers and other professionals.

 

FIRST redefines winning for these students because they are rewarded for excellence in design, demonstrated team spirit, gracious professionalism, maturity, and the ability to overcome obstacles. Scoring the most points is a secondary goal. Winning means building partnerships that last.

 

Ray Almgren, Vice President Academic Relations reported that 65% of the participants’ robot entries this year were programmed in LabView. In addition, National Instruments and their partners donated 1,800 controllers worth about $10,000 each to the program.  www.usfirst.org

 

 

 

 

The X PRIZE Foundation, Google Inc., LEGO Systems, National Instruments, and Wired’s GeekDad announced “MoonBots: A Google Lunar X PRIZE LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Challenge” at NIWeek 2009. The new contest will challenge small teams comprised of children and adults to design, program, and construct robots that perform simulated lunar missions similar to those required to win the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, a private race to the Moon designed to enable commercial exploration of space while engaging the global public. To further this purpose, the X PRIZE Foundation and Google have now joined forces with three other well known technology companies to offer a competition that will stimulate learning of robotics and team building while exciting students and their families about their potential roles in the new Moon race. 

 

Once registration for the contest opens, teams will be asked to submit designs illustrating how they will build, program and operate their robots using LEGO MINDSTORMS robotic kits. There will be no charge to enter the contest and registration will be open to teams across the globe. 

 

 

The competition will encourage the participants to use free software tools such as Google’s SketchUp, LEGO’s Digital Designer, National Instruments LabVIEW, and Google’s YouTube platform to delineate how their entry will be constructed and how their team will function. From these submissions, a select group will be chosen as finalists and provided with free LEGO components to construct a large Moonscape that will serve as the competition’s ‘playing field.’ Finalists will then construct, program and demonstrate their robots to be judged. 

 

To learn more about the MoonBots competition and to find out upcoming information when to register to compete, please visit http://www.moonbots.org.

 

LabView 2009 was introduced at NIWeek, along with a commitment to provide a new release every year. The new version has functions to simplify parallel programming, distributed wireless sensor networks, RF testing and real-time math.

 

The new NI Real-Time Hypervisor software is virtualization technology making it possible to run multiple operating systems side by side on the same multicore processing hardware. Using this software, engineers and scientists can run Windows XP and LabVIEW Real-Time side by side on the same controller, partitioning the processor cores among the two operating systems for more efficient use of system resources. The Real-Time Hypervisor works with dual- and quad-core NI PXI controllers as well as the NI Industrial Controller.

 

LabVIEW 2009 also delivers enhancements for existing parallel design technology including multicore programming and FPGA development. LabVIEW 2009 features a new parallel for-loop structure, which automatically divides iterations of loops across multiple processors to increase the execution speed of the process.

 

LabVIEW 2009 provides improved FPGA programming by offering early compile feedback and critical path highlighting to make early estimates on FPGA resource usage and better debug timing violations. Additionally, new streamlined FPGA IP delivers higher-throughput math and signal processing performance.

 

NI Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) make it possible to deploy distributed measurements across physical hardware systems. LabVIEW provides the ability to configure the new NI WSN platform with a drag-and-drop programming environment for performing analysis as well as extracting and presenting measurement data.

 

The new NI WLAN Measurement Suite for LabVIEW guarantees compliance with IEEE 802.11 a/b/g standards and performs measurements more than five times faster than traditional box instruments. In addition to the WLAN Measurement Suite, the WiMAX, GPS and MIMO solutions for LabVIEW provide the ability to test more wireless standards with NI modular instruments.

 

 

With the LabVIEW MathScript RT Module, LabVIEW 2009 further expands access to real-time math - the implementation and deployment of mathematical algorithms to deterministic operating systems, for engineers and scientists using text-based math tools.  The module also provides engineers and scientists with the ability to incorporate their own existing .m files using interactive user interfaces and real-world I/O, and easily deploy them to real-time hardware for faster system prototyping. By simplifying the process of deploying mathematical algorithms to real-time embedded hardware, LabVIEW 2009 can help medical device designers, machine builders and autonomous system designers shorten product time to market.

 

National Instruments announced the joint development of a high-speed digitizer with Tektronix, the PXI Express digitizer. The PXI modular instrumentation performance is greater than 3 GHz bandwidth, sample rates beyond 10 GS/s, data throughput of more than 600 MB/s and multi-module synchronization capabilities.   While National Instruments and Tektronix have collaborated on various projects for more than 20 years, the digitizer represents the first joint hardware development project between the two companies. Proprietary Tektronix ASICs and design expertise provide the basis for high-speed signal acquisition with low noise and high linearity, delivering superior signal integrity. The official product release and first shipments of the new digitizer will be available from National Instruments in 2010, with lead user engagements continuing through the end of 2009.

 

The new LabVIEW NI SoftMotion Module simplifies the development of advanced single- and multi-axis motion applications, and new NI C Series drive interface modules expand the connectivity of the NI CompactRIO programmable automation controller (PAC) platforms.   LabVIEW NI SoftMotion offers the convenience of programming motion profiles with a high-level, function block API based on the Motion Control Library defined by PLCopen. It includes function blocks for straight line, arc, and contoured move types as well as function blocks for advanced operations such as electronic gearing and camming. The module also features advanced functions for designing custom motion applications including trajectory generation, spline interpolation, position, and velocity control and encoder implementation. Since the module is an extension of LabVIEW, users can synchronize motion applications with I/O and measurements in a single development environment.  www.ni.com/motion

 

The VeriStand 2009 is an open, configuration-based software environment for creating real-time testing applications such as hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) and controlled environmental tests. NI VeriStand helps developers configure a multicore-ready, real-time engine capable of supporting third-party I/O interfaces including a variety of data acquisition and field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based I/O interfaces as well as triggerable data-logging and stimulus-generation tasks.

 

Control algorithms and simulation models often required by real-time testing applications also can be imported into NI VeriStand from NI LabVIEW software and many other third-party modeling environments, including The MathWorks, Inc. Simulink® and ITI SimulationX® software environments.  Additionally, NI VeriStand provides a rich, configurable run-time interface that includes a variety of tools to interact with real-time testing applications. The user interface is a run-time-editable workspace, so engineers can create and modify their user interfaces without interrupting real-time test system execution. www.ni.com/veristand