NIWeek 2012 Keynote Presentations

NI Vice President of Marketing Eric Starkloff talks about how graphical system design and NI LabVIEW accelerate innovation, empowering engineers and scientists to push the limits of what is possible using smaller teams in less time.

David Fuller and Simon Hogg introduce NI LabVIEW 2012. With renewed intensity on raising your productivity by improving the overall quality, LabVIEW 2012 provides both a radically innovative and high-quality production-ready platform. See the new features of the software, including built-in training resources, new templates, and sample projects, and get the latest from the Idea Exchange.

David Fuller and Andy Chang describe the new NI LabVIEW Robotics Simulator using the KUKA youBot robot. With this new addition to LabVIEW, you can import CAD models and dynamically simulate robotics systems directly in the LabVIEW environment to achieve extremely efficient prototyping.

Stefanie Breyer and Tom Walling describe the new stand-alone NI CompactDAQ chassis. Going beyond simple data logging, this new rugged chassis extends the platform to include powerful onboard processing and either Windows or real-time operating systems. This particular demo uses the stand-alone chassis as a headless in-vehicle data logger for capturing CAN data, accelerometer data, video, chassis strain, and engine diagnostics while simultaneously performing combustion analysis of each cylinder using the Drivven Combustion Analysis Toolkit.

Chris Washington and Stephen Barrett describe how you can combine NI LabVIEW and CompactRIO with new Drivven C Series modules to measure engine conditions such as cylinder position, combustion performance, and power requested. Using these measurements, the software makes real-time adjustments to engine control parameters such as the amount of fuel. This helps engineers optimize engine performance around a combination of goals for power, fuel economy, and emissions.

Meg Selfe, vice president of Complex and Embedded Systems for IBM’s Rational Group, describes the rapidly increasing role of software in embedded systems. This changing product development landscape allows for significant innovation while introducing significant risk. Validation, test, and traceability of requirements have become critical competencies to ensure you are building what you intended.

Kyle Clark, advanced systems engineering manager at Dynapower Company, explores the latest trends in power and energy management. With the NI Single-Board RIO platform and the new NI General Purpose Inverter Controller, Dynapower quickly iterates on inverter designs to get to market faster with a higher quality product.

NIWeek veteran and OptiMedica Cofounder Mike Wiltberger describes the latest innovative medical device from OptiMedica based on NI LabVIEW and graphical system design methods. The Catalys uses NI R Series multifunction RIO hardware to control femtosecond laser-assisted cataract surgery. This provides a reproducible, noninvasive technique to replace the least predictable and most technically demanding steps of conventional cataract procedures.

Dr. Riccardo Mancinelli describes a passive radar system from SELEX Systems Integration. The graphical system design approach that combines NI LabVIEW system design software and reconfigurable hardware helps engineers develop complex applications faster than ever before. The performance of the NI PXI platform coupled with LabVIEW FPGA-based hardware like NI FlexRIO provides world-class instrumentation and processing power for high-performance embedded applications.

Charles Schroeder and David Nosbusch describe the latest PXI products. Since inventing PXI back in 1997, NI has been at the forefront of innovation for the automated test platform, leading with design advancements in processing power and bus bandwidth and incorporating the latest in FPGA and converter technologies. This year, NI introduces new PXI controllers, PXI chassis, and FPGA products using the newest PC technology.

Charles Schroeder, Erik Johnson, and Ian Wong describe a brand new class of RF instrument. For the PC industry, Moore’s law has led to better performance, smaller size, lower cost and power, better integration with other devices, and the ability of the user to customize devices through software. However, in the test and measurement industry, most companies have focused only on increasing performance. With the introduction of the vector signal transceiver, NI has redefined instrumentation and increased performance while harnessing the other benefits of Moore’s law. This new category of RF instrumentation combines an RF signal generator, RF signal analyzer, digital I/O, and NI LabVIEW FPGA.

The new NI PXIe-5644R vector signal transceiver is a unique and compelling solution to test challenges. Because it features an onboard FPGA, you can control the digital interface to your chip simultaneously with the RF signal generator and analyzer. The device under test control and data processing can take place within the instrument itself rather than requiring transfers back and forth over the bus to the controller. Doug Johnson, director of engineering at Qualcomm Atheros, describes how over the past year, this product has helped Qualcomm reduce test times further, giving the company a 20X improvement over its previous PXI solution and a 200X improvement in test times over its original equipment.

Eric Starkloff closes the opening day keynote for NIWeek 2012. Visit the NI website to learn about all the new products introduced today.

Listen as Eric Starkloff kicks off the second day of NIWeek 2012.

Listen as André Nobre and Mark Kubis of SERIS talk about solving the challenges of solar monitoring. They are using NI CompactRIO and LabVIEW to synchronize photovoltaic (PV) measurements across Singapore that predict how the weather can affect the solar irradiance on the solar panels. NI DIAdem is used to collect and display the data for further processing.

Dr. Andy Clegg and Dr. Jeannie Falcon explore the challenges of servicing offshore wind turbine systems. See how they use NI LabVIEW software and CompactRIO hardware to develop a Motion Reference Unit that compensates for the heave, surge, and pitch of the boat to get the personnel onto the turbine safely.

Dr. Minoru Tanagaki from Kyoto University talks about the effects of the March 2011 earthquake in Japan. The aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear reactor left many people stranded. NI Japan created the Recovery Grant Program that enabled Kyoto University to develop a mobile radiation detection system. Because time was critical, Kyoto researchers used NI LabVIEW to develop a system quickly and deploy it to 100 systems on public transportation vehicles to monitor the area.

Shelley Gretlein explains how to use machine vision to track presenters and overlay information to produce an augmented reality environment.

Alain Moriat, Tianming Liang, and Dr. Doug Kim introduce the new NI LabVIEW FPGA IP Builder. It incorporates high-level synthesis (HLS) technology to generate high-performance FPGA IP and quickly create high-performance and resource-efficient IP for NI FPGA-based devices. With the LabVIEW DSP Design Module, you can develop multirate digital signal processors correctly the first time.

Dr. Robert Duncan and Greg Morrow discuss the need to expand the experimental approach to develop more research on anomalous heat effects. These effects have been referred to as “cold fusion” and “low-energy nuclear reactions” in the past, but these names imply an understanding of the physical origin of these anomalous effects that in fact does not yet exist. NI LabVIEW is at the heart of each of these experiments that may help develop and unravel the mysteries of the many theories.

Jeff Kodosky and Kyle Gupton talk about using mobile devices to view data taken anywhere in the world. You can publish data to the NI Technical Data Cloud and you can read it on your data dashboard. See future NI LabVIEW touch base programming examples including creating VIs on a tablet.

Shelley Gretlein closes the NIWeek 2012 Day 2 keynote. Visit the NI website to learn about all the products and applications discussed today.

See how the Leeds Mechanical Engineering Team of Professor Martin Levesley, Dr. Pete Culmer, Barnaby Cotter, Chris Norman, and Dominic Clark are using Microsoft Kinect and NI LabVIEW to reduce the cost and accessibility of kinesthetic rehabilitation devices.

Manchester senior lecturers Dr. Danielle George and Peter Green and their student Ehsan Najafzadeh characterize the limits of RF communication using NI LabVIEW and NI USRP™ on a Rolls-Royce aircraft engine.

Dr. Dave Barrett, Dr. Drew Bennett, Jaime McCandless, and Jason Curtis discuss how NI LabVIEW and NI Single-Board RIO helped guide Olin’s Sailbot to second place in the International Autonomous Sailboat competition.