Chasing the Wind and Building the Future with NI Tools – NIWeek Day 3 Keynote Recap

[Dave Brown]

The final day of NIWeek 2011 kicked off with amazing illustrations of how NI graphical system design tools are powering the future of innovation, particularly for the engineers of tomorrow.

Ray Almgren, NI VP of marketing for core platforms, gave the stage to high-school and university students from around the world. They demonstrated how they have been using LabVIEW and other NI tools to design and prototype all sorts of unique technologies, including the following:

• A really cool 3D display from university students from Beijing, China
• An autonomous device for plugging leaks in deepwater oil pipelines, created by MIT students
• A unique medical device – and an automated test system to analyze it -- created by two Austin high-school students
• A baseball pitching analysis device from Rice university students
• A haptic feedback system for tumor detection from the University of Leeds in the UK
• An automatic horn tuning system stimulated by live audio data, created by students from the University of California, San Diego

The keynote event closed with a fascinating presentation from severe storms researcher Tim Samaras, star of the Discovery Channel series, Storm Chasers. Tim demonstrated how he uses LabVIEW and other NI tools to analyze tornadoes. His video footage alone – featuring up-close and personal experiences of thrashing storms and ultra-high-speed footage of lightning – was enough to mesmerize the crowd.

All in all, today’s keynote was a perfect closing to a week jam-packed with innovation.

Visit www.ni.com/niweek/keynote_videos.htm to check out the videos from all of this week’s keynotes.

And of course, be sure to register for NIWEEK 2012. See you next year!