We are living a period where extraordinary advances are being done.
Green engineering is a great example of how technology in general (and engineering practices in particular) are changing at incredible speeds as we as a society came to realize that natural resources won't last long if we keep consuming them at current rates. With the current computing power provided by computers, simulation has proven to be an excellent tool to decrease design times
Below in a link to an example on how simulation can be applied in the field of Green Engineering. A wind turbine is being simulated so users can quickly understand how effects on wind speed and direction affect the power the turbine provides to the grid.
Feel free to download the code (and the evaluation version of LabVIEW, if you don't have it) and play around with it. You might even be able to build your own backyard wind turbine!
As Javier, I mean Guti (I can never get over this nick-name... ) was saying, I am "the other" writer of this blog. I know I was supposed to write this about 2 weeks ago, but deadlines are part of the R&D work and they have priority and, most importantly, we don't want customers to wait for the next version, are we? Anyway, here is my introduction (in IEEE format):
"Alexandre Barp was born in Lages, Santa Catarina, Brazil, in 1973. He received the M.Sc. in Industrial and Scientific Metrology and Instrumentation and B.Eng. degree in Process Control and Automation from Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil, in 2000 and 1997, respectively. He is currently project manager "...oh, you know what, I think we should be less formal in this blog. So, since I started in LabVIEW R&D in 2003, I was one of the developers who created the Control Design Toolkit and worked on several other products like PID, Fuzzy Logic, and Simulation Module. Now, I am a Group Manager in the heart of LabVIEW R&D focusing on Control and Simulation. I also work as Adjunct Professor for Texas State University where I lecture Control and Instrumentation.
I am very passionate about control and automation (and instrumentation, robotics, mechatronics, education, and anything related to Engineering, even food engineering...) and I love to program in LabVIEW (even before I started to work for National Instruments). So, I will try to show you the overlap between these two areas. Also, I plan to bring a bit of R&D into this blog, discussing ideas and features with a bit more "technical" insight and also I will use this avenue to discuss future development using LabVIEW in the area of design and implementation and, when possible, sharing where we want to go with this tools.
To get geared up a bit, check this video below. This was a demonstration we did for the last NI Week where we were trying to demonstrate how LabVIEW can be used to control an inverted pendulum controlled by a DC motor. Since it looks like a robot arm this is called Pendubot. In short, we used the LabVIEW Control Design and Simulation (on a iMac, new feature for LabVIEW 8.6!) to design the controller and we used web services to send the parameters to the Real-time target (cRIO). We used a switching controller with a state-machine to move from one state to another and we also used LabVIEW FPGA to estimate the speed of the signal on FPGA. We used state feedback control based on Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR). I know that some of you at this point don't understand what I am saying... That is OK! Just keep reading and notice how LabVIEW is cool (first of all) and can be used for design and implementation of controlers with pretty advanced stuff... :) Now, if you want to get deeper into it, let me know if want more info, I will be happy to share this code with you... We had University of Texas and Iowa State University implementing this controller in their labs. One last thing: all that all this development was done in 2 to 3 weeks of development from begining to end. Which by itself was pretty nice too... Maybe we should call SRPC (Super-Rapid Control Prototype).
