New Real-Time Features in NI LabVIEW Control Design Toolkit Shorten Development Time for Complex Control Systems

National Instruments today released the latest version of its NI LabVIEW Control Design Toolkit, a collection of tools and mathematical functions for analyzing, designing and implementing control systems. As a part of the LabVIEW graphical system design platform, the Control Design Toolkit delivers features – including high-performance, real-time implementation and advanced Kalman filtering – that help engineers and scientists streamline control system design and final deployment. With the new real-time capabilities of the LabVIEW Control Design Toolkit, engineers shorten development time by going directly to real-time deployment after they have analyzed and designed their control system.

Engineers can use the advanced Kalman filtering to perform estimation and account for noise in systems where some system states cannot be directly measured. The new version of the LabVIEW Control Design Toolkit accounts for fractional I/O delays, resulting in more accurate models and overall increased closed-loop system performance. The LabVIEW Control Design Toolkit also integrates seamlessly with the LabVIEW Simulation Module, helping engineers describe nonlinear and continuous systems and complete the verification of their design processes. LabVIEW Control Design Toolkit Version 2.1 is ideal for engineers working to model, analyze and design complex, real-world applications such as automotive, aerospace, complex machine control and hardware in the loop.

“My students are already using the National Instruments CompactRIO platform for the sensing and control of an unmanned ground vehicle,” said Dr. Robert Bishop, chairman and professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin. “The advanced Kalman filter capability included in the LabVIEW Control Design Toolkit 2.1 will be extremely useful for developing a real-world navigation system for our unmanned vehicle.”

Graphical System Design
The LabVIEW embedded design and prototyping platform combines the LabVIEW graphical development environment with off-the-shelf measurement and control hardware for design, simulation, rapid prototyping, implementation, validation and verification of embedded systems. Intuitive graphical dataflow programming empowers engineers and scientists to rapidly develop and iterate on designs, reducing the time from concept to prototype. Using LabVIEW with tightly integrated NI PXI or CompactRIO hardware further reduces time to market by eliminating the need for costly integration steps such as board bring-up. After prototyping, domain experts can deploy custom designs to an extensive range of off-the-shelf NI hardware as well as custom hardware using components such as the Analog Devices Blackfin Processors.

About National Instruments
For 30 years, National Instruments (www.ni.com) has been a technology pioneer and leader in virtual instrumentation – a revolutionary concept that has changed the way engineers and scientists in industry, government and academia approach measurement and automation. Leveraging PCs and commercial technologies, virtual instrumentation increases productivity and lowers costs for test, control and design applications through easy-to-integrate software, such as NI LabVIEW, and modular measurement and control hardware for PXI, PCI, PCI Express, USB and Ethernet. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 3,800 employees and direct operations in nearly 40 countries. For the past seven years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America.

Pricing and Contact Information