Geoffrey C. Orsak, NI Week 2004

A Successful Career in Engineering (In Theory) Tim Dehne BSEE Rice University 1987 Senior VP of R&D National Instruments

What do Michael Dell and Bill Gates have in common?

Geoffrey C. Orsak, NI Week 2004 Engineers = Leaders Fact: 17% of Fortune 500 CEO’s have a business degree Fact: 20% have an engineering degree Source: US News and World Reports

Why do 20% of Fortune 500 CEOs have an engineering degree?

Leadership Traits of Engineers Intelligent Problem solvers Creative Persistent Thorough Logical Practical

What job functions need engineers? Product development Design validation Manufacturing Technical Sales Product Marketing Applications support Any role

Two Basic Paths in Product Development Technical Track –Deep technical competence –Mentor –Tackle the hardest technical challenges Management Track –Motivate people –Streamline processes –Make business decisions

Geoffrey C. Orsak, NI Week 2004 " Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. " Arthur C. Clarke 850 books 1 USB Memory Stick 2/3 of a ton 4oz

In college you get your personal GPA In industry you get a raise if you can work on a team

AM/FM Stereo DVD+RW PC/WWW/ Navigation Cellular Phone Satellite Car Alarm/Radio Games Remote Diagnostics PDA CD+RW Today’s Designs– Converging Complexity

How do you get off to a great start? Stay on top of the latest technology –Learning never stops Work hard Meet your commitments/deadlines –Just like you did in school! Be a contributing member of the team Be curious Ask questions Sign up for needed tasks

Key Aspects to a Design Sound design and simulation Prototype verification Break the design Test, test, test Minimize costs Packaging/usability Manufacturability Test

How do you continue to grow? Stay on the leading edge of technology Keep a watchful eye on your industry Become more well-rounded –Global perspective –Communication skills –Project management –Systems perspective

The World is Flat

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics, Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS)

Engineering Graduates Comparison CountryGraduates China300,000 India200,000 Japan103,300 Russia90,700 US63,300 Germany25,500 France22,800 UK 22,000 Source – NSF: Science and Engineering Indicators 2004 *Data for China and India are estimates

Product Development Process Modeling,DesignModeling,Design Verification/PrototypeVerification/PrototypeValidationValidationManufacturingManufacturingAnalysis,SimulationAnalysis,Simulation “97% of design engineers support their designs all the way throughout the manufacturing phase” - Cahners Research, 2001

“ The shuttle Columbia was doomed in part because NASA relied on flawed computer simulations and mathematical formulas that failed to accurately predict damage… ” “ …experts say, they should have performed tests on shuttle components… ” Columbia Accident Investigation Board findings as summarized by Alan Levin and Traci Watson, USA Today Emphasis by author The Need for Validating Simulations with Test Data

Geoffrey C. Orsak, NI Week 2004 Machine Vision Typical Manufacturing Line Motion Control Operator Interface Discrete Control Temperature Control

Geoffrey C. Orsak, NI Week 2004 Typical Measurement and Automation Applications Body & Chassis Audio Engine Durability Tire & Brake Safety Emissions Electronics Keypad LCD Sound Acoustics RF Signal Battery Audio Sound Electronics Power Supply Video Signal Disk Drive

From the touch screen user interface, physicians can select spot sizes, pattern types, spot density and number of spots. Laser Photocoagulation

Visica2 Treatment System –Cryogenically freezes benign breast tumors using ultrasound –Eliminates need for surgery –CompactRIO and LabVIEW used to design, prototype, and deploy a control system Sanarus Medical, Inc. ™

3 GHz Single Core Quad Core Octal Core

Parallel Architectures Drive Performance Intel QX6700 Quad-Core Processor Pair of Core 2 dies in single package 2.66 GHz CPU speed Faster processors Multicore processors

“To fully exploit the power of processors working in parallel...new software must deal with the problem of concurrency." – Bill Gates, Microsoft There’s a Small Catch… “But a parallel programming model… will not emerge for five to 10 years, according to experts from Microsoft Corp." – Rick Merritt, EE Times

Inherent Parallelism with LabVIEW

15 Global Challenges Facing Humanity World Federation of United Nations Associations - Millennium Project

Green is Everywhere

What Others are Saying “We find with energy and greenhouse gases, if you start to measure, people reduce the usage,” says Linda Fisher, the chief sustainability officer at DuPont. Measuring is not a simple task, but once a company has a proper baseline it can see what can be changed. - Excerpt from “A Change in Climate”, published in the January issue of the Economist “What gets measured gets managed” - Excerpt from Green to Gold authored by Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston

Measure It Fix It!

Green Engineering Definition: Green Engineering is the use of measurement and control techniques to design, develop, and improve products and technologies resulting in environmental and economic benefits NI Enabling Technologies: High-Speed and High-Resolution Measurements Advanced Analysis and Signal Processing High-Speed and Advanced Control Embedded System Technology

Green Engineering Areas Renewable Power Generation Power Monitoring Environmental Monitoring Optimizing the Efficiency of Existing Machines and Automation Systems Development and Test of Environmentally Beneficial Products and Technologies

Renewable Energy

Siemens Power Generation - Denmark One of the premier companies in the international power generation sector Supply wind turbine generators with rotor diameters up to 107 meters (350 ft) Use PXI, LabVIEW, and LabVIEW Real-Time and to develop and test the control algorithms embedded in the turbines

Thermomax Tests Evacuated Tube Solar Collectors Challenge: Test equipment for efficient and economical conversion of solar radiation into thermal energy. Solution: Two PC-based, fully automated test systems. Products: FieldPoint, Motion Control, LabVIEW DSC Green Benefits: The new facilities have significantly reduced the time and cost of product development, making it possible to perform tests all year round, using the solar simulator.

Control of a Permanent Magnet Linear Generator for Ocean Wave Energy Challenge: Interest in wave energy conversion devices is rapidly growing worldwide for the potential to harness a sustainable and renewable energy source. Due to the oscillatory nature of ocean waves, the power generated from a permanent magnet linear generator (PMLG) for ocean wave energy conversion is pulsed and left unconditioned, is not easily used or stored. Solution: With an active rectifier topology, the real and reactive power from the PMLG is fully controllable. Using a novel three-phase active rectifier topology and force controller with a dc-dc converter for bus voltage regulation the energy can be stored. Products: CompactRIO, LabVIEW FPGA Green Benefits: A working design of a three-phase active rectifier and controller was implemented and prototyped with a CompactRIO system. Full paper available at:

Retrofitting Existing Machines and Production Equipment

Virginia Tech Wins ChallengeX 2006 Hybrid Vehicle Competition with cRIO Challenge: Develop methods for reducing total energy consumption and emissions in a crossover vehicle while maintaining or exceeding vehicle utility and performance Solution: A high-level control strategy for the hybrid vehicles implemented and prototyped with LabVIEW FPGA & CompactRIO. Result: VT reduced well-to-wheels petroleum use by 74% for Year 2 Win Products: LabVIEW, Simulation Interface Toolkit, LabVIEW Real- Time, CompactRIO Green Benefit: A three-year engineering competition to improve fuel efficiency and performance at a lower cost for future GM vehicles.

Steel Mill Reactor Monitoring One of the largest consumers of electricity in the US Optimizing Existing Melting Process using: –Advanced Power Analysis –FPGA-based protection circuit –Datalogging Used CompactRIO for advanced control and integrated it with existing PLC system Prevents the over melting of scrap steel (waste electricity) Maximize the efficient use of electrical energy and rapidly change control methods to reduce power flicker

T&O Stelectric Reduces Pesticide Use with NI Vision To keep the Danish railroad tracks weed free, herbicides were sprayed on 100% of the railroad tracks NI Vision systems were outfitted on the weed spraying wagon to identify weeds and limit pesticide spraying to those areas Green Benefit –Reduced herbicide usage by 50% –Automated the reporting of pesticide use to comply with environmental regulations

Environmental Monitoring

Environmental Sensor Networks: Monitoring Global Change Monitoring interactive phenomena –Atmosphere, Water, Soil, and Ecosystems Characteristic spatiotemporal diversity C H2OH2O LightQ

Environmental Sensor Networks: Example Program - NIMS

NIMS at Wind River (Costa Rica) Canopy Crane Research Facility

46 Mercury Emissions Stack Monitor Application Reliable mercury emissions sampling system for coal fired power plants Developed as monitoring system approved by EPA Benefits Expanded memory and performance Automated interface Technical Key Flexible, real-time software architecture “ The success of the project was due to the processing and automation power of the cFP-2120, as well as the ease of use derived from integrating the PDA Control System. ”

From Kindergarten to Rocket Science LEGO Mindstorms NXT “the smartest, coolest toy of the year” CERN Large Hadron Collider “the most powerful instrument on earth”

“To do for embedded what the PC did for the desktop.” Graphical System Design National Instruments Vision Evolved Complex instrumentation RF Digital Distributed Industrial control RT/FPGA systems Electronic devices C code generation Real-time measurements Embedded monitoring Hardware in the loop Virtual Instrumentation Embedded Systems

Geoffrey C. Orsak, NI Week 2004 It’s OK to have fun!

Customer-Defined PC-Based Measurement and Automation Solutions Traditional Vendor-Defined Instruments What is Virtual Instrumentation? Processor RAM Real-Time OS Display Power Supply Hard Disk

Geoffrey C. Orsak, NI Week 2004 Engineering Feats were Rock Festivals… 25,000 New Yorkers paraded for 16 hours when the first cablegram was sent from America to Europe. 200,000 people celebrated a week-long fiesta when the Golden Gate Bridge was opened in ,000,000 visitors came to see the 1000 foot Eiffel Tower in 1889

Geoffrey C. Orsak, NI Week 2004 Engineers used to be Rock Stars Wright brothersThomas EdisonHenry Ford

The World Needs Engineers Intelligence Problem solvers Creativity Persistence Thoroughness Logical Practical

“Clearly it is now possible for more people than ever to collaborate and compete in real time … on a more equal footing than any time in the history of the world – using computers, , networks, teleconferencing, and dynamic new software.” - T. Friedman, The World is Flat

“… the most profound thing to me is the fact that a fourteen-year-old in Romania or Bangalore or the Soviet Union or Vietnam has all the information, all the tools, all the software, easily available to apply knowledge however they want.” - M. Andreessen, The World is Flat