National Instruments Introduces LabVIEW Robotics 2009 for Robotic Control Systems

National Instruments Co., Ltd. (National Instruments, referred to as NI) recently announced the launch of LabVIEW Robotics 2009. A new addition to the Graphical System Design (GSD) software, the software provides a standard development platform for designing robotics and autonomous control systems. NI LabVIEW Robotics 2009 provides a rich library of robot functions that can connect to standard robot sensors and actuators, integrate basic algorithms for intelligent operation and perception, and include motion control functions for robots and autonomous vehicles. With this new software, engineers and scientists can bring their ideas to life faster, seamlessly deploy real-time embedded and FPGA hardware, and achieve software through the integration of various processing platforms, third-party software tools, and pre-engineered robotic platforms. maximum flexibility. 'Usually building a new robot requires starting from scratch. Without software standards, there is little opportunity for code reuse and sharing,' said Dr. Dave Barrett, a professor at the Olin School and former associate director of engineering at iRobot. 'We need an industrial A state-of-the-art, well-supported software development system to create autonomous mobile robots with perception systems, decision planning and executive control. I spent 15 years searching for the best robotics programming language, and LabVIEW fulfilled my dream.” Based on an open graphical system design (GSD) platform, LabVIEW Robotics 2009 can import code from languages u200bu200bsuch as C/C++, .m files, and VHDL, and utilize built-in drivers to interact with various sensors (such as LIDAR, infrared sensors, sonar and GPS), which greatly reduces development time, allowing engineers and scientists to focus on developing their own algorithms and intelligent control IP. In addition, the software includes robotics IP that can be easily implemented on real-time embedded hardware for obstacle avoidance, dynamics and search algorithms to help autonomous systems or robots choose the best path. 'The LabVIEW development environment has evolved significantly over the past 23 years,' said John Pasquarette, associate director of software product marketing at NI. 'LabVIEW has grown from a data acquisition and instrument control tool originally used for automated test into a powerful embedded Mechatronics design platform. Engineers and scientists can now quickly deploy application development to real-time embedded hardware in a unified LabVIEW development environment, enabling the rapid design of complex and sophisticated control systems.” LabVIEW Robotics 2009 can be used for the following applications Design and prototyping: – Autonomous and semi-autonomous ground vehicles – Rescue robots – Personal and service robots – Medical robots – Academic and research robots – Agriculture and mining systems LabVIEW Robotics 2009 in combination with NI CompactRIO or NI Single-Board RIO devices can Provides a complete development platform for designing robot control systems. The reconfigurable I/O (RIO) architecture includes a real-time processor, FPGA, and a range of I/Os including analog, digital, motion, and communications I/O. By combining off-the-shelf sensors with CompactRIO or NI Single-Board RIO embedded systems, engineers and scientists can rapidly prototype and develop complex robotic applications.