The University of Tulsa Wins the National Instruments Most Innovative Use of Graphical System Design Award at Challenge X 2007

AUSTIN, Texas--The University of Tulsa last week won the National Instruments Most Innovative Use of Graphical System Design Award at the third annual Challenge X: Crossover to Sustainable Mobility competition. The team built an environmentally friendly crossover sports utility vehicle based on the National Instruments LabVIEW graphical design environment. Challenge X, which took place in Detroit, Mich. from May 30 to June 7, is a four-year engineering competition to develop methods for reducing total energy consumption and emissions in a crossover vehicle while maintaining or exceeding vehicle performance and consumer acceptability.

One of the primary challenges in developing a hybrid vehicle is balancing electric and engine power while maintaining the charge on the vehicle’s batteries. The University of Tulsa team developed all of its vehicle’s control algorithms, including clutch control, torque filtering and power blending, using LabVIEW. With the NI CompactRIO embedded control and data acquisition system and CAN, the team implemented its control strategies and sent commands to existing vehicle control hardware, which included the engine and body control modules. The team also added extra devices, including a battery pack and electric motor. The driver interface touch panel ran LabVIEW and incorporated a rear back up camera using NI-IMAQ for USB Cameras software.

“NI LabVIEW helped us focus more on what we wanted our system to do and less on the low-level details of implementation,” said Scott Rainwater, controls team leader for the University of Tulsa. “We saved many hours of testing and development time with the intuitive graphical system design environment of the software and easily shared code among team members.”

The National Instruments Most Innovative Use of Graphical System Design Award recognizes the schools that implement industry-standard computer technology with powerful application software and cost-effective hardware in their vehicle designs. The award encourages Challenge X teams to use commercial, off-the-shelf PC-based technology in creating sophisticated measurement, control, simulation, prototyping and testing applications. Teams are judged on design philosophy and control strategy, implementation of virtual instrumentation solutions, the strategies they used to overcome challenges encountered during implementation and schematic diagrams of the NI products in the vehicle.

The University of Waterloo received second place honors for the NI award based on its hardware-in-the-loop test stand using LabVIEW, PXI and the LabVIEW Simulation Interface Toolkit, while Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology received third place for its model-in-the-loop on a PXI real-time platform using LabVIEW and the LabVIEW Simulation Interface Toolkit.

About National Instruments

National Instruments (www.ni.com) is transforming the way engineers and scientists design, prototype and deploy systems for measurement, automation and embedded applications. NI empowers customers with off-the-shelf software such as NI LabVIEW and modular cost-effective hardware, and sells to a broad base of more than 25,000 different companies worldwide, with no one customer representing more than 3 percent of revenue and no one industry representing more than 10 percent of revenue. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 4,000 employees and direct operations in nearly 40 countries. For the past eight years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America. Readers can obtain investment information from the company’s investor relations department by calling 512-683-5090, e-mailing nati@ni.com or visiting www.ni.com/nati.

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