National Instruments software selected by Visteon

Austin, Tex. - National Instruments announced March 13 that Visteon Corp. (NYSE: VC), one of the world's largest suppliers of automotive systems and components, has adopted NI's LabView Real-Time and PXI development platform for rapid prototyping of next-generation automobile control systems.

By Control Engineering Staff March 14, 2002

Austin, Tex. – National Instruments announced March 13 that Visteon Corp. (NYSE: VC), one of the world’s largest suppliers of automotive systems and components, has adopted NI’s LabView Real-Time and PXI development platform for rapid prototyping of next-generation automobile control systems. By using NI software and hardware tools, Visteon says it has reduced the time and costs associated with developing these control systems by up to 33 percent.

Working with NI real-time software and PXI hardware, Visteon engineers can test a variety of control and interface algorithms and can then quickly make changes and improvements to their systems design using LabView’s graphical development environment. Other real-time control systems not only take more time to program than LabView, but also often prove expensive because they require specialized hardware.

NI tools are used to develop emerging automotive technologies like adaptive cruise control, which gives a car the ability to automatically slow down or speed up depending on the location of cars it senses on the road ahead. For example, this tool allows engineers to create radar and vehicle control commands in LabView and test their programs in prototype automobiles. They download their applications to run deterministically in a real-time PXI controller, which is small enough to sit in the car trunk where it communicates electronically with the car’s radar.

“Traditional real-time systems have been expensive and inflexible,” said John Graff, NI vp of Marketing. “Visteon’s success with LabView Real-Time combined with commercial off-the-shelf hardware, like PXI, is just one example of how low-cost computer-based technology can solve some of the most demanding real-time applications and deliver strong results.”

Control Engineering Daily News Desk
Gary A. Mintchell, senior editor
gmintchell@cahners.com


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