Program by Dancing? Exploring the Possibilities of Graphical Programming - NIWeek Day 2 Keynote Recap

[Dave Brown]

Jeff Kodosky, NI cofounder and “Father of LabVIEW,” opened the second day of NIWeek by summing up the 25-year history of LabVIEW and its graphical structured dataflow programming language, explaining how it basically beats the pants off of sequential programming languages. He detailed why he pursued a graphical dataflow language in the first place and why it holds great promise for the future of innovation, especially over text-based programming.

For example, “The explosive growth of mobile devices and multitouch interfaces is changing how we use computers,” said Kodosky. “This new technology makes text-based programming look…outdated and irrelevant.”

Building on Kodosky’s statements about the future, NI director of software marketing, Shelley Gretlein, hosted several engineers on stage to demonstrate exactly how LabVIEW and other NI graphical system design tools are driving the future of innovation. From medical technologies, urban infrastructure engineering, and even gaming, all the way to research in smart grid development and fusion for alternative energy, presentations from multiple NI customers and engineers proved that Kodosky’s invention already is building the future.

Highlights of the keynote demonstrations included…

• Creating a new OCT scanning system (that’s only about the size of a six pack) using the LabVIEW FPGA Module and NI FlexRIO
• Improving urban infrastructure and monitoring bridges with new NI Wireless Sensor Network devices and the forthcoming NI Technical Data Cloud
• Developing smart grid technology in India using NI Single-Board RIO
• Researching fusion energy by controlling plasma inside a Tokamak device using LabVIEW Real Time and multicore targets
• Having fun with soccer-playing robots, biomimetic robotic tuna fish, and programmable water drawings (You had to see it to appreciate it.)
• Dancing with a gesture-recognition interface application that turns body movements into programming commands within LabVIEW (Seriously!)
• Using fingertips to physically draw a functional LabVIEW block diagram on a large multitouch interface screen

To get the specifics behind these interesting applications of NI graphical system design tools, check out www.ni.com/day2.