Archive for the 'NIWeek 2007' Category

LabVIEW replaces vehicle ECU - University of Waterloo

Published by Michael Aivaliotis on December 13, 2007 in NIWeek 2007, embedded and labview. 0 Comments

Stephen Litt, a systems design engineering student from the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada) shows us how he and three other students replaced a vehicle ECU with a CompactRIO module running LabVIEW Real-Time. What started as a fourth year design project has now turned into a start-up company called WaterlooSPEED. The team documents their efforts on their blog, and in this post, describe how they have the system controllable via a PDA! Now that’s cool.

Steve Hassenplug - Mindstorms NXT holonomic drive robot.

Published by Michael Aivaliotis on December 6, 2007 in NIWeek 2007 and mindstorms nxt. 0 Comments

Steve Hassenplug was there from the beginning when Lego decided to revamp the old RCX platform. He was part of the Mindstorms User Panel (MUP) which was extensively covered in a Feb 2006 Wired magazine article. He was later invited to participate in the Mindstorm Developer Program (MDP) where he built a holonomic drive robot called Omni. This latest version which he shows off in the video uses a compass sensor to keep on track to it’s destination.

LAVA Member - Mark Balla at NIWeek

Published by Michael Aivaliotis on November 30, 2007 in LAVA and NIWeek 2007. 0 Comments

Mark Balla is a very active member of the LabVIEW community and contributes his valuable time to the LAVA forums. He developed an Icon editor replacement for LabVIEW, is currently a member of the Code Repository review team and is an organizer for the LAVA Coding Challenges. I spent a few minutes at NIWeek this year to talk to him about LAVA and why LabVIEW community involvement is important to him.

LabVIEW powers MOT-V and Unicycle

Published by Michael Aivaliotis on November 24, 2007 in NIWeek 2007. 3 Comments

Mike Kleinigger is currently a sophomore at RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) pursuing a dual degree in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. In this video He discusses the MOT-V (Medium Object Transport Vehicle) at NIWeek 2007. Unlike the Segway style vehicle, the MOT-V always tries to keep it’s position vertical as oppose to moving forward.We were surprised to see a unicyle which also uses a control system for stabilization.

LabVIEW powers University of Tulsa Challenge X vehicle

Published by Michael Aivaliotis on November 21, 2007 in Challenge X, NIWeek 2007 and labview. 0 Comments

In this video interview we have Amanda Emnett from the University of Tulsa give us a tour of the vehicle her team worked on for the Challenge X competition. The “brain” of the vehicle control system is powered by a Compact RIO Real-Time FPGA system that was programmed with LabVIEW.Challenge X is a three year national competition that started in 2004. It’s sponsored by General Motors and the US Department of Energy. The objective is to take a GM Chevy Equinox and modify the vehicle to minimize emissions and consumption, without sacrificing utility and performance. Now in its final year, the focus is on delivering a “showroom” vehicle that addresses the requirements of consumers.

TestStand does HO

Published by Michael Aivaliotis on November 19, 2007 in NIWeek 2007 and teststand. 0 Comments

In this video taken at NIWeek 2007, we interview Rick Francis who is one of the TestStand developers. The only reason this demo is cool is because of the HO sized slot cars. Each car is a “device under test”.

Automated Rubik’s Cube Solver

Published by Michael Aivaliotis on October 24, 2007 in NIWeek 2007. 0 Comments


View video in Quicktime format


There’s been some activity over the past year or so where people have been trying to create automated machines to solve the Rubik’s cube. At NIWeek 2007 which took place this past August, I had the chance to interview an applications engineer from National Instruments who described the system they put together to achieve this goal. As you can see from this video, the process is very involved. It requires imaging of the faces, processing the solution and executing the moves to produce the final completed cube. The hardware is expensive, the mechanics problematic and in the end, the demo fails to do the job. On the other hand, it’s a cool way to spend some time with some motion control hardware.Most of the time, the best solution to something is the one that is the simplest. Take a look at this Rubik’s cube automated solution that uses Mindstorms NXT. I am scared to see the budget difference between the two implementations. Daniele Benedettelli’s website provides more insight into how this was done. As you can see, the main problem of how to grip and rotate the side has been solved by using a socket type construction that wraps around all the cubes. This way, the stress of rotation is evenly distributed.