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ly and Virtual Instrumentation - Changing the Face of Design, Measurement and Automation Feedback
Cs By Jayaram Pillai, Managing Director, National Instruments, India Top of For
ICs
From testing cars in automotive companies to controlling production and quality in manufacturing plants, the
Cs
must need for engineers and scientists is to have a flexible cost-effective solutions for test and measurement.
Cs
Around 30 years ago, to address these needs, a different way to solve the test and measurement problem was
Cs evolved, called "virtual instrumentation". Today, virtual instrumentation has reached mainstream acceptance
tion ICs (Data and is used in thousands of applications around the world in the industries such as automotive, electronics,
and oil and gas.
wave Guruji Search
/ Boards The concept of virtual instrumentation is, an engineer can use software running on a computer combined
Design with instrumentation hardware to define a custom, built-to-order test and measurement solution. The vision of
Development virtual instrumentation revolutionized the way engineers and scientists work, delivering solutions with faster
development time, lower costs, and greater flexibility.
asurement eeherald.c

Components of Virtual Instrumentation

The heart of any virtual instrument is flexible software. Every virtual instrument is built on this flexible and India Sear
ct powerful software. Innovative engineer or scientist will apply his domain expertise to customize the eeherald.com
measurement and control application as per the requirement. The result is a user-defined instrument specific
to the application needs. With such software, engineers and scientists can interface with real-world signals;
analyze data for meaningful information, and share results and applications. NI LabVIEW, the productive tw ;
software component of the virtual Instrumentation architecture, is the graphical development platform for test,
design and control applications.
Bottom of F

Figure 1: Virtual instrumentation combines productive software, modular I/O, and scalable platforms.

The second virtual instrumentation component is the modular I/O for measurements that require higher
performance, resolution, or speeds. Advanced Modular Instrument hardware use the latest I/O and data
processing technologies, including Analog to Digital Converters (ADC), Digital to Analog Converters, Filed
Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), and PC busses to provide high resolution and throughput for
measurements from 7 1/2 digit DC to 2.7 GHz. In combination with powerful software, engineers can create
custom-defined measurements and sophisticated analysis routines.
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NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS

The future of virtual instrumentation

James Truchard believes that performance will improve, while costs and
development time will decrease, making engineers more productive through
the use of virtual instrumentation
Scientific Computing World: May / June 2004
Some 17 years have passed since the concept of virtual instrumentation was pioneered, changing
the way engineers and scientists measure and automate the world around them. Today, virtual
instrumentation is coming of age, with engineers and scientists using 'virtual instruments' in
hundreds of thousand of applications around the world, resulting in shorter lead times, higher-
quality products, and lower costs.
The building blocks of virtual instrumentation include powerfully productive software, modular
measurement hardware, and commercial technologies such as the personal computer and the
internet. With virtual instrumentation, engineers define the measurements in a test or control
application, using intuitive software and general-purpose measurement hardware that spans a
wide range of frequencies and resolutions. These tools immediately deliver the productivity,
performance, and cost-saving benefits of rapidly advancing computer technologies to engineers
in hundreds of industries.
Simplifying the development process
Virtual instrumentation has led to a simpler way of looking at measurement systems. Instead of
using several stand-alone instruments for multiple measurement types and performing
rudimentary analysis by hand, engineers now can quickly and cost-effectively create a system
equipped with analysis software and a single measurement device that has the capabilities of a
multitude of instruments.
Powerful off-the-shelf software, such as our own company's LabVIEW, automates the entire
process, delivering an easy way to acquire, analyse, and present data from a personal computer
without sacrificing performance or functionality. The software integrates tightly with hardware,
making it easy to automate measurements and control, while taking advantage of the personal
computer for processing, display, and networking capabilities.
The expectations of performance and flexibility in measurement and control applications
continue to rise in the industry, growing the importance of software design. By investing in
intuitive engineering software tools that run at best possible performance, companies can
dramatically reduce development time and increase individual productivity, giving themselves a
powerful weapon to wield in competitive situations.
Preparing investments for the future
Measurement systems have historically been 'islands of automation', in which you design a
system to meet the needs of a specific application. With virtual instrumentation, modular
hardware components and open engineering software make it easy to adapt a single system to a
variety of measurement requirements.
To meet the changing needs of your testing system, open platforms such as PXI (PCI eXtensions
for Instrumentation) make it simple to integrate measurement devices from different vendors into
a single system that is easy to modify or expand, as new technologies emerge or your application
needs change. With a PXI system, you can quickly integrate common measurements such as
machine vision, motion control, and data acquisition to create multifunction systems without
spending valuable engineering hours making the hardware work together. The open PXI
platform combines industry-standard technologies, such as CompactPCI and Windows operating
systems, with built-in triggering to provide a rugged, more deterministic system than desktop
PCs.
Beyond the PC
The internet has ushered in a new age of data sharing, and has spurred new networking and
remote computing capabilities of virtual instrumentation that was simply not possible with their
stand-alone propriety counterparts. Virtual instrumentation takes advantage of the internet, so
you can easily publish data to the web direct from the measurement control device, and read data
on a handheld personal digital assistant, or even on a cellular phone.
This level of connectivity will progress even further, bringing a new meaning to modularity.
With advances in internet and wireless technologies, engineers will be able to reuse modular
components, and also more easily share their knowledge and experiences across global
enterprises - consolidating engineering efforts across every stage of development.
The wave of commercial technology advances will continue. The performance advances will be
easier to implement, saving valuable development time and integration time while reducing costs
over traditional instrumentation solutions. No one can predict exactly where the future will take
virtual instrumentation, but one thing is clear - the PC and its related technologies will be at the
centre, and you will be more successful as a result.

James Truchard is President and CEO of National Instruments

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May / June 2004

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The future of virtual instrumentation
James Truchard believes that performance will improve, while costs and development time will
decrease, making engineers more productive through the use of virtual instrumentation
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