What would compel 4,000 smart people to travel to Texas in
August, only to braise in 40° C (105° F, y’all), full humidity heat for an
entire week? Well, if you are an engineering enthusiast (AKA nerd) like me, you
are attending NIWeek
in Austin. Every year, on meteorologically the worst possible week of the year,
our friends at National Instruments (NI) host a
celebration of technology, and engineering heroism unlike any other event in
the world. As per usual, Team Quanser was there to share in the fun.
NIWeek has become the event where Quanser engineers truly
strut our stuff… our digital dazzle… scientific sassy… mechatronic mojo. Not so
much for some well-thought-out marketing rationale to clearly demonstrate the
core benefits of our solutions, but because it’s the one time of the year where
the engineers are unashamedly engineers… builders, explorers, rascals,
tinkerers.
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Cameron Fulford, Engineering Manager, and Tom Lee,
Chief Education Officer, both of Quanser, prepare to fly the Qball X-4
quadrotor, Quanser’s flagship UAV platform, with the newly introduced NI myRIO
embedded hardware device.
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This year, we sure did have fun. One of the key highlights
of the conference for NI was the launch of their latest (and truly sick)
product, the NI myRIO, a richly featured
embedded computing platform that is pointed directly at students who are
itching to break away from their desktop chains and make mobile magic happen.
Unlike other hobby platforms, the myRIO is a true NI solution with all of the
robustness and support software features that will make the difference between
real engineering and hacking for students.
Quanser was one of the few privileged groups to get a
prototype unit well ahead of launch so that we could get a head start on
integration into our product line and maybe even develop a couple of demos in
time for the launch. So a sensible company would have used this opportunity to
create interesting demos on how the myRIO, when combined with our devices, can
offer richer educational experiences.
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NIWEEK is one of the world’s most important
engineering conferences. This year’s event featured the launch of the
revolutionary NI myRIO device, a richly featured embedded computing platform that allows students to work outside the lab to design real projects quickly.
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What did we do? We strapped it on to our flagship unmanned
aerial vehicle (UAV) platform, the Qball X4 quadrotor, and flew it around the conference, generally delighting people
with the sheer cool factor and occasionally annoying people with the
ear-assaulting hum of the Qball’s research-grade motors.
The Qball is one of Quanser’s most celebrated research
platforms. Bleeding edge research groups around the world to validate complex
algorithms for multi-agent unmanned vehicle experiments (i.e. intelligent,
collaborative robots). Unfortunately, prior to this year, there really was no
practical way to have the Qball work on the NI platform simply because there
was no embedded platform capable and rich enough to do all the things that the
Qball does… until the myRIO.
The end result, as we say in Canada was, “beauty eh?” It was
truly impressive. Not just the fact that the Qball, powered by myRIO, flew
crisply and in a well-controlled way, but the actual integration process was
surprisingly smooth.
As we illustrated during our demo at the keynote, the work
that NI has invested in a full range of multitalented express VI’s for a whole
range of essential subsystems and functions reduced the development effort to a
matter of days. We had been bracing ourselves for an effort of weeks (the UAV
applications are some of the trickiest) but thankfully we were proven
wrong.
So where do we go from here? When can you buy a Qball V2.0
powered by NI myRIO? When can you feel and breathe the magic yourself? We have
no idea. The reality is the Qball is an entire platform with options for
optical tracking, and a wide range of experimental applications. It’s so much
more than just getting it to fly. It’s also not exactly the kind of product
that people buy for use by undergrads. But in the end, I think this was an
amazing illustration of the true power and potential of the myRIO platform.
Specs aside, it really brought out the kid among our
engineering team and got us to be more creative and ambitious. It was an
exciting project. It was a fun project. Thankfully, it was not as hard as we
thought. And in the end, it was the right thing to do.
P.S. I wasn’t totally honest. We actually did do a sensible
myRIO thing as well. We announced and demonstrated the upcoming Quanser
Terminal Board (QTB) for NI myRIO, a device that quickly connects the myRIO to
most of Quanser’s core plants offering users a terrific, new, cost-effective
DAQ option for control systems. Yawn.
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