More than 110 authors from 13 countries submitted nearly 60 papers to the inaugural National Instruments Graphical System Design Achievement Awards. This award ceremony is a chance for NI leadership to honor some of the outstanding work being done by customers from around the world.
A judging committee of more than 30 technical publication editors and NI experts judged papers submitted across 10 application categories. In addition, the category finalists were considered for the Editors Choice, Green Engineering, Humanitarian, and the Customer Application of the Year awards.
During NIWeek 2008, the 22 category finalists were recognized for their outstanding applications. Hear from several of the award-winning authors including Jeff Stevens, recipient of the Humanitarian of the Year award, and Dr. Ohbayashi, the researcher recognized for developing the Customer Application of the Year, as they received their respective achievement awards.
From soccer playing robots to competing in Challenge X, the crew at Virginia Tech is always up to something good. This year, Team Victor Tango from Virginia Tech and TORC Technologies brought their award-winning autonomous vehicle, Odin, to the NIWeek exhibition hall floor! Odin, which uses NI LabVIEW and CompactRIO, won third place in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge after completing a 60-mile course where it had to navigate traffic and obey traffic laws in under six hours. The team took home a $500,000 prize and, during NIWeek this year, it also won the Mechatronics/Robotics/Control category at the inaugural Graphical System Design Achievement Awards!
Using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT, the "NXT-xans" was modeled after the Nexans Spider, a remote operated vehicle (ROV) that uses LabVIEW and CompactRIO to level seabed to clear the way for a 1,200-kilometer undersea pipeline that collects natural gas from the Ormen Lange gas field. Who thinks we should deploy the NXT-xans in the Ormen Lange as well?
Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) is a unique program where teams of undergraduate students design, build, and deploy real systems to solve engineering problems for local community service and education organizations. In the EPICS program at Purdue University, student’s projects marry learning and engagement. Recently, a team of students used NI LabVIEW to develop the Mars Rover exhibit. Displayed at the Imagination Station in Lafayette, Indiana, children can wirelessly navigate a solar-powered Mars rover to make geological discoveries in a mock Martian landscape. Check out the Mars robot in the video below, or better yet, come see it in person at NIWeek 2008!
It’s pretty obvious that we at the VI Roadshow like robots. Seriously, what’s not to like? They can solve the Rubik’s cubes (an almost impossible task for a human), play soccer, bowl a perfect game, and even save lives. Yes, that’s right – save lives.
Using the NI LabVIEW Embedded Module for ADI Blackfin Processors, Nanyang Polytechnic in Singapore developed an autonomous, spider-like robot that can ultimately be used to replace humans in dangerous missions such as sweeping and neutralizing mine-fields and navigating buildings damaged by events such earthquakes and fires.
From Quintuplet Dad: Occasionally my work at National Instruments takes me to exotic places. For example, a few months ago, I got to travel to Marion, Ohio. I had never been to Ohio and there wasn't much that was exotic but I did get to go to Nucor Steel which was a little bit exotic. Nucor uses LabVIEW, CompactRIO and Compact FieldPoint in their steel mill where they recycle scrap steel and make it in to sign post and rebar. At first, you might think that doesn't sound very exciting...until you hear how they do it. First, they put the scrap (which looks like a big pile of trash) into a big container. The container is on a cart that is controlled by Compact FieldPoint. Then a big crane comes and picks up the container and dumps the scrap into the furnace. The furnace (now this is the cool part) is an arc furnace. This means that they stick a anode and cathode into the metal and just turn it on. CompactRIO helps control and measure that part of it. After they turn it on, it gets really noisy, a lot of sparks fly, and a little while later you have molten steel.
One of the coolest parts about this trip was that it looked like a scene from The Empire Strikes Back. You know the one. It is where Han Solo is just about to be frozen in carbonite (see if you can find it in the video). I wouldn't have been surprised if Darth Vader came out of the control room.
Now, one of the interesting points is that before they had CompactRIO and Compact FieldPoint, they were not able to effectively measure their process. This meant that they didn't really know how much electricity to pump into the steel and ended up wasting a lot. Also, their plant would occasionally cause the city of Marion Ohio to have brownouts which, as it turns out, is something the neighbors don't appreciate much. When they started using CompactRIO and Compact FieldPoint, they were able to more effectively measure everything and make their process much more efficient thus reducing the number of brownouts in the city (making everyone much happier).
Now, one of the things I learned from this trip is that Green is not always clean. Recycling steel is really dirty work. There was a lot of dust which made me nervous because I was carrying around an expensive camera. There was also a lot of fire and molten metal which was cool and made up for the dust a little.
In the end, one of the best things about Nucor was that it was a great win-win situation. Using recycled steel as opposed to making new steel makes Nucor money and also effectively uses other people's trash (everybody wins!). On a side note, I really like the idea of using other people's trash. Growing up, I was always a fan of getting useful stuff out of other people's trash. My first skateboard, my sister's first pair of roller skates, and my family's nice silverware came from a pile of trash my parents found as we were on a family walk when I was 6 (don't worry, we asked the owners of the trash before we took their stuff). This interest in other people's trash doesn't quite carry over to my wife however, so I usually try to resist the temptation to check stuff out when she is around.
Now that you know the background, check out the video (and be sure to look for the Han Solo and molten lava parts):
So, this is our 101st post. We were supposed to make a big deal out of this one. We thought it would be funny to celebrate the 101st post rather than the 100th just because it would be odd and we are odd. We had a few meetings about it and talked about various funny things we could do. Many of the things we cam up with seemed like pretty good ideas at the time...at least until we left the meeting and went back to our normal jobs and forgot all about them.
Things like that often happen with the VI Road Show. The VI Road Show team meets every Friday and in these meetings, we generally laugh a lot and make fun of various aspects of our industry and the world in general, make some loose plans, then go back to our real jobs. For over a year now, we have had an idea for chopping a traditional instrument in half with a light saber that comes out of a CRIO chassis. It would involve some special effects work, which I have some experience with, but would be very doable. However, that idea seems to always get trumped by "real" stories like mind controlled wheel chairs, underwater robots, and guitar hero cubicles. Still, it is pretty fun.
Now, where was I? Oh yeah, so this is the 101st post. Horrah! Now on to the rest of the post. Based on the title, you are probably thinking, "When is he going to get to the 'green' stuff?" Next, I want to get to the green stuff. Last week, we had our company meeting. We have these meetings twice a year and I am often involved with running the AV side of things and occasionally making a few videos. This last meeting had a theme of Green and Green Engineering. A lot of the presentations were focused on what NI is doing to improve the world. As it turns out there is a lot of things...but we won't get into those here. The main thing we want to mention here is one of the videos we made for the meeting to help remind people to turn the lights off when they leave a room. To help get this message to the masses, we decided to make a video that tugs on the heartstrings of the employees with outrageously false propaganda. You can see it for yourself here:
From Quintuplet Dad: A few weeks ago, we had a big event here between Austin and Houston called the MS 150. This is a big bike ride to benefit people with MS (Multiple Sclerosis) where the participants ride between Houston and Austin over the course of 2 days. NI employees had a strong showing (as you'll see in the video) and even brought along some prototype wireless data acquisition hardware and LabVIEW software to track some of the riders. They were able to track speed, acceleration, and temperature most of the way (they had some small problems that you'll see in the video). This event not only was fun and served a good cause but also helped R&D get some valuable data with the prototype hardware.
At the 2008 Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, we noticed that LabVIEW was popping up all over the place. We decided to hit the road with Embedded Software Product Manager and all-around-cool-dude, P.J. Tanzillo, to film some of the ways LabVIEW is helping with embedded design. Check out the video below to see LabVIEW being used in a range of applications - from golf simulators to inverted pendulums, to Web servers.
