The future of virtual instrumentation

From August 5-8, 2013, National Instruments held their annual Worldwide Graphical System Design Conference, NIWeek 2013, in Austin, Texas. The conference is described on the National Instruments website as delivering "technical networking and instruction with interactive sessions by NI R&D engineers and guest lecturers; targeted industry summits; hands-on workshops; exhibitions on the latest advancements in design, research, and test; and keynote presentations from leading technology thought leaders."

The keynote presentations are of particular interest because they are uploaded as videos, and are not too long for students to listen to (between 5 and 20 minutes).

http://www.ni.com/niweek/keynote-videos

The introduction keynote speech (time 19:29) was presented by Dr. James Truchard, President and CEO of National Instruments. The title is Expanding the Vision of Graphical System Design. Dr. Truchard talks about current and future products, after giving a brief overview of the evolution of instrumentation. He speaks clearly at a relaxed tempo, and there is a large projection screen behind him with the key words of his talk (including definitions of key concepts). This helps with understanding.

But if 20 minutes is too long for your students to listen to a speech, then you can focus specifically on a section of approximately 5 minutes in which he talks about "looking to the future" (from 10:49 to 15:21). He refers to the current state of technology as Industry 4.0 - the 4th Industrial Revolution, and reviews the developments of the first three revolutions. It would be interesting to have students brainstorm what they identify as these 3 revolutions (and when). Dr. Truchard describes them as:

1. (end of 18th century): Water and steam powered mechanical production;
2. (start of 20th century): Electric power and mass production;
3. (start of the 1970s): Electronics and IT automation;
4. (Today): Cyber-physical systems.

He says that cyber-physical systems "will transform industry" and describes their emerging infrastructures (eg., Intelligent Systems, Smart Factory, M2M, Big Analog Data(TM) Solutions, etc.). He then gives examples of cyber-physical systems across industries and applications:

• tumor treatment
• 6x6 MIMO OFDM Testbed
• advanced smart grid
• large telescope mirror control
• virtual test trains
• robotic rehabilitation
• rapid control prototyping

 He refers to these examples as "enabling the next generation of technology." This is where the recommended section ends (at 15:21).

This talk is not only interesting and informative, but it gives students practice in listening comprehension and could lead to further discussion about the impact of the future technology mentioned. These technology areas could include our students' future professional fields!