NI Systems (India), the 100 percent arm of National Instruments headquartered in Texas, US will soon set up its second facility in the country. Managing director of the Bangalore-based company, Jayaram Pillai said Delhi was the most likely choice. The new unit will help the company get closer to customers in the north, especially in the fast growing regions of Uttaranchal, Himachal Pradesh and the like. A customer education facility is also being conceived. NI Systems already has an educational centre in Bangalore.
“The company has seen significant growth in its last nine years. The average growth rate of the Indian operations exceeds the overall global levels too. More than 20 percent comes from Asia, primarily India and China. Expanding our operations is essential to support this growth,” said vice- president (marketing and investor relations) of National Instruments, John Graff.
EDUCATING ENGINEERS
Creating an educational centre in the new location is significant since the software and modular hardware developed by the company are general tools. Users, who are largely mechanical or automotive engineers, are not familiar with the languages with which software programmes are developed. For instance, the recently launched LabVIEW 8.20 can cater to many applications including design. Since a lot of outsourcing is happening from India (especially in the automotive industry), engineers had to be taught to leverage tools like LabVIEW to speeden up their application processes.
Pillai said the new educational centre would impart the required training while help would also be sought from NI India’s associates. Historically, NI has been strong in Tier 1 and 2 companies, predominantly supported through its associates. Graff recalled an incident when one of these companies provided solutions to a manufacturer on the understanding that it would take the savings in power for one year (due to the solutions offered) as its service charges. The associate company earned its service charges within a short span of time without affecting the normal schedule.
According to him, NI’s tools for the automotive industry not only help design and develop products quickly but also validate and market at the earliest. Since the software is developed based on graphical system design, people can design and test products quickly.
CONTROLLED GROWTH
Over a period of time, the company will set up its third facility. “We would like to grow in a controlled manner”, Pillai said. NI Systems will also induct field sales engineers to strengthen its customer sales support. NI has three application-oriented software for measurement systems, controls and design.
Engineers and scientists can apply the company’s components in rapid control prototyping, hardware-in-the-loop, design validation, manufacturing test and field service. Since the time it began operations in India, NI Systems has come a long way. “We are beating our own expectations as the Indian operations are growing much faster”, Pillai said.
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NI COMPACT RIO
NI Systems has recently developed a traction control system that prevents a car from slipping. Essentially, it detects the difference in speed of wheels and either cuts off engine power or applies relative braking to the faster wheel. The difference in speed of the wheels is expected to be zero when the car is going straight but this is not the case when it is turning. At all times, for non-slipping conditions, the difference in speeds is known.
If the difference is anything but that, the controller (or the ECU) of the vehicle knows the car is slipping and triggers some action. This could be cutting off engine power or actuating variable brake-to-wheels. To take this system from a concept to a design stage and then to prototyping, testing and deploying, NI Systems ‘NI Compact RIO’ enters the picture. During the recent NI day celebrations in Bangalore, the company demonstrated the system that had wheels driven by DC Servo motors and speeds measured by encoders. Manual braking was applied to either wheel to simulate slipping.
The NI Compact RIO would then respond by reducing the duty cycle of the power output fed to the motor. The system allowed running three control loops in parallel, one each for independently controlling the speed of the two wheels and the third to detect slipping (appreciable difference in speeds). The third loop compared speeds and in case of slipping gave the set point to the faster wheel as the lower (of two wheels) speed.
The control action exhibited by this demonstration is a fundamental aspect of many processes in the industry. The ultimate aim is to demonstrate speed in this process which governs efficiency. In this case it was achieved in about one microsecond, said applications engineer of the company, Sameer Nagpal.
PROCESS AND SYSTEMS
This concept is at the core of many processes which runs inside a car or any other vehicle applications. All these processes entail some sort of data acquisition, processing, control algorithm and output. Other examples include the anti lock braking system (ABS) and automatic gear systems. ABS, for instance, detects the difference in speed of wheels under braking and, in case it detects a lock, it triggers varying brake pressures to the wheels allowing them to get back in sync with each other.
There are some characteristics which are common to all these control systems-high precision, parallel loops running on the processor, modular hardware and software and rugged system. High points on these parameters obviously imply a more robust and powerful system which translates to a better vehicle. Designing, prototyping and testing of these systems is critical to flawless functionality in vehicles especially in safety critical items like brakes.
Several brake system manufacturers have evinced interest in this system since high precision, parallel loops, rugged, modular hardware and software are key characteristics for developing and testing of these processes.