NIWeek provided an opportunity for companies to tout their successes in deploying measurement and control systems in a variety of industries, from aerospace to electrical power generation. Presenters described agricultural, automotive, aircraft, health, energy, weather-forecasting, and 5G communications applications.
In addition, the Internet of Things received significant attention, as it has at other recent events. (See here, here, here, and here, for example.) At NIWeek, Jim Robinson, a GM at Intel, commented that the Internet of things combined with big data represents unprecedented value. In 2013, he said, half a billion “non-personal things” were added to the network, and 85% of deployed systems do not share data with each other or the cloud.
As that situation changes, he said, the estimated global economic impact of IoT and big data will reach an estimated $2.7 trillion to $6.2 trillion in global economic impact in 2025. Market trends driving IoT, he said, include pervasive and inexpensive connectivity, low-cost computing (from storage to sensors) driven by Moore's law, and big-data analytics (driven by data science and the cloud). Robinson's presentation complemented remarks made by NI vice president Ray Almgren.
Here are some additional application highlights cited by NIWeek presenters:
- Automotive
Dinu-Tudor Gruian, leading technical expert for electrical test at Continental AG, said his company is helping its automotive customers pursue safe mobility, clean power, and intelligent driving. He is helping customers pursue time to market advantages while meeting the challenges of today and tomorrow relating to connected vehicles, in-vehicle infotainment, cellular connectivity, and heads-up displays. His efforts have yielded a core test platform, deployed across multiple plants, incorporating PXI chassis and controllers that embrace measurement and stimulation, pin switching, and CAN communication.
Tomohiro Morita, senior engineer at Subaru Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., described his use of NI products in simulating and testing a hybrid vehicle's gasoline motor, electric motor, and battery. The complex interaction of the gasoline and electric powertrains required microsecond simulation loop rates using nonlinear models. The operation involved a host PC, an HIL simulator, digital I/F, an ECU, and ECU monitor. Automated testing and better test coverage, he said, afforded a 20-fold reduction in test time.
Jean-Lévy Beaudoin, VP of sales at Averna, described his company's Test Execution Console based on NI TestStand, LabVIEW, and LabWindows CVI. The company serves the automotive and transportation industries as well as aerospace and defense, telecom infrastructure, consumer electronics, and life sciences applications. Specific automotive applications include lighting systems, wheel speed and ABS sensors, infotainment systems, ECUs, and collision-avoidance radar. Beaudoin said that in one case the use of an NI PXI test system reduced the cost of testing two DUTs by 40% compared with a legacy test system.
- Aircraft
Bernard Duprieu, head of manufacturing technology research at Airbus, and Sébastien Boria, R&D mechatronics technology leader at Airbus, described their vision of the smart factory, incorporating smart tools, intelligent communications, industrial robots, smart inspection, and mobile manipulators. The company employs NI products including NI SOM, sbRIO, CompactRIO, and PXI. A platform-based approach, they said, offers a tenfold reduction in development time.
Tony Tenison, senior product manager, and Megan Krause, controls and instrumentation engineer, both at Jacobs, noted that many of their projects involve expensive facility operations, and because retest can be difficult or impossible (in the case of destructive test), all data is critical. Key issues for them are shortened development times, increased testing reliability, and multichassis synchronization. They described a system called Test SLATE used to test fixed-wing aircraft. It is based on NI VeriStand as well as signal-conditioning modules, sensors, and actuators to stress the wings and measure response.
- Health and medical
John Lloyd, research director at BRAINS Inc., described a helmet drop test system, in which a helmet is released from a specified height and its response measured on impact with a rigid base. The system employs LabVIEW and CompactDAQ as well as an angular-rate sensor, linear accelerometer, and load cell. The goal is to assist in the design of helmets to minimize the risk of concussion. The company has developed a design that reduces rotational forces by 50%.
- Energy
Dr. Danson Michael Joseph, power systems engineer for National Grid UK, and Peter Haigh, power systems engineer for National Grid UK, elaborated on the challenges presented to them by embedded generation (in the form of wind and solar farms, for instance), HVDC interconnect, and decommissioned plants. Meeting these challenges requires access to data, flexibility, and grid-measurement capability—in turn requiring sensors and, within a secure network, monitoring systems and IT infrastructure. CompactRIO offers them better grid measurements, they said.
Dr. Curtiss Fox, director of operation of the Duke Energy EGRID at Clemson University, described a 15-MW wind-turbine test facility, which deploys 1,000+ sensors in a drivetrain mechanical test rig that includes a DAQ system, load-control system, and dynamometer and load-application unit. The average U.S. household uses 900 kWhr per month, so 15 MW could power over 12,000 households. The test system includes a power amplifier, reactive divider, digital simulator, and current and power transducers, and it makes use of a PXI FPGA DAQ system, PXI interface controller, a human-machine interface, a PXI data logger, a CompactRIO temperature controller, and a RAID array.
- Machine-condition monitoring
Terry Wilson, IT principal at Duke Energy, gave a presentation that spanned two topics—energy and machine condition monitoring. He provided an update on his company's machine-condition monitoring approach, which involves 30,000+ sensor nodes (including accelerometers, temperature sensors, oil-analysis sensors, thermal cameras, and proximity probes), 2,000+ monitoring-system nodes, NI InsightCM deployed across about 60 plants, and a corporate monitoring and diagnostics center. The company deploys more than 230 CompactRIO systems.
Robin Pritz, a field test engineer at CNH International, described a data acquisition system deployed on a combine harvester. The system employs CmpactRIO and CompactDAQ to deliver custom data views of machine health worldwide. The Big Analog Data solution architecture connects sensors and system nodes with local, remote, and cloud edge IT with corporate IT.
- Weather forecasting
Dr. Takuo Kachiwa, department general manager at Furuno Electric Co. Ltd., described a weather-radar system able to provide an advance warning to the onset of severe “gorilla thunderstorms.” Traditional radar design requires algorithm design, digital design, and microwave design. He streamlined the approach using the LabVIEW RIO architecture and Microwave Office, enabling early design exploration, microwave HIL simulation, and rapid prototyping. The results were two compact X-band Doppler weather radar systems, one of which (the WR-50) weighs only 28 kg while offering a 30-km range and operating on less than 300 W of power.
- Communications
Dr. Amitava Ghosh, head of North American Radio Systems Research at Nokia, described 5G research areas, including cell densification, chip-scale antenna design, MIMO and beam-forming technologies, interference management, and new spectrum and air-interface technologies. Goals are to achieve better than 100-MB/s edge data rates with better than 10-GB/s peak performance with less than 1-ms latency. Investigations and simulations of a 5G cellular access point system include a host PC, a PXI FlexRIO baseband system, and RF circuitry and an antenna, all linked to a handset system consisting of RF circuitry and an antenna, another PXI FlexRIO baseband system, and a host PC.
- Software
John Bergmans, president of Bergmans Mechatronics LLC commented on the use of HTML 5 and his implementation of LabSocket to easily extend LabVIEW to the Web. LabSocket server, accessible to any browser, includes an http server and message broker that communicate with LabSocket support VIs within a host LabVIEW program.
You can watch the NIWeek presentations at www.ni.com/niweek/keynote-videos/.