The automotive industry has moved towards digitalization and connected mobility, resulting in a significant rise in the use of electronics and technology in vehicles. Vehicle-to-Everything [V2X] is one such technology which is still a nascent market that has managed to offer a wide range of everyday convenience benefits. Today, it has grown to be a critical component in providing vehicles with the ability to communicate with each other and beyond. In fact, the automotive V2X communication market is expected to reach a staggering $26.72 billion by 2025, according to a report by Grand View Research.

Image Source – V2V V2I

Interestingly, some of the key reasons why OEMs today are forced to incorporate V2X communication systems into vehicles are due to the several benefits that the systems provide in terms of advanced route guidance systems, roadway efficiency, driver convenience and traffic optimization. Allowing vehicles to ‘talk’ to each other, V2X systems are geared towards safety and are essential for hundreds of thousands of self-driving cars to operate safely.

Sasken understands the importance of disruption to address the need for autonomous driving. They have achieved a breakthrough in this area and are engaged with a Tier-1 OEM and provide services for the V2X platform to enable actionable insights in the connected automobile. Today, we have a Q&A session with Ashwin Ramachandra, VP and Head – Product Engineering Services, Sasken Technologies, on how players in the automotive industry are re-defining the electronics segment through the advent of advanced communication technologies like Vehicle-to-Everything [V2X]. So, let’s get started with the Q&A…

Can you please talk about yourself, your experience so far with Sasken Technologies ?

I have more than 20 years of experience and am currently the head of the Embedded Practice at Sasken Technologies Pvt. Limited. The Embedded Practice group consists of the following divisions:

  • Semiconductors and Platform devices
  • Industrials
  • Automotive
  • Digital [Cloud and Analytics]

When it comes to the automotive domain, the amount of software & intelligence in the car is increasing day by day and that intelligence executes on the chips that are manufactured by the semiconductor companies. In order to appreciate what Sasken is doing in the automotive segment, it is very important to deep dive into what Sasken does in the semiconductors segment. The amount of software and intelligence in the car has increased in three different areas:

  • Software on the cockpit [In-cockpit entertainment]
  • Autonomous Driving
  • Telematics

The rise has been majorly seen in the last five years. Silicon vendors are bringing out chipsets that are much more powerful so that customers can enjoy a richer audio experience and exceptional performance for these offerings. Sasken starts working with the semiconductor vendors through the Development and Testing phase. Companies like Qualcomm have chipsets like MSM820 that are meant for richer infotainment experience. On a similar line, there are silicon vendors that are working on powerful chipsets for the autonomous driving sector and in future, we would see many more companies bringing out much richer solutions for that segment.

Telematics would be typically seen in the form of communication modems. In the western world, you would have an LTE Modem connected to the car for a whole bunch of communication. These are the three major areas where semiconductor companies and Sasken are co-working together to revolutionize the overall automotive industry.

Please comment on the rise of the infotainment options in car and where do you see Android in the automotive segment ?

Many years back, we only had the option of FM Radio, which gradually moved to CD Player, and now you have a plethora of playback options on the touchscreen located on the dashboard of your car which provides a whole new world of entertainment. Previously, these systems were based on Vanilla Linux, but now Android is playing a vital role even in the automotive sector. As we all know, Android already has a huge market share in the mobile space and now its share in the auto segment is gradually increasing.

By the year 2020, we expect that Android would be present on more than forty percent of mid-range and high-end cars, which means that Android is at a huge inflection point in the auto segment. Sasken has extensive experience in Android and our team of engineers has been working on Android since the first public release of Android. This experience gives us a huge edge over our competitors since when companies need expertise on Android for the car segment; they need someone like us who have gone through the complete development cycle. The mobile expertise and experience in bringing products to the market would definitely help us in achieving an edge in the auto segment!

Based on the queries and projects that Sasken has been approached for in the auto segment, we believe that Android is very much in line to be the default operating system for cars. This would bring in a major change in the infotainment space for automobiles.

Image Source – Ashwin Ramachandra

Can you walk us through some of the technical challenges for porting Android on the automotive platform ?

The use-cases that you see on the phone are quite different from the use-cases that you see in the car. For example, you would never plug a music player like an iPod to your phone, but that is a very natural use-case when it comes to a car. You expect that the device and its type is recognized when it is plugged into the dashboard and it should also start the playback. This means that there are a lot of changes that are required to the Android stack in order to accompany such use-cases. From the UI and UX point of view, a lot more changes are required. Also, unlike India, users in the western countries use a lot more voice commands, and those commands vary when used on car vis-a-vis mobile.

You need to have a good amount of Android expertise in order to realize such use-cases and though Androidauto would evolve over a period of time. Expertise does come in very handy since time-to-market is very critical for any product. Also, the time-to-market for an automobile is typically 18~24 months, which in itself speaks for the complexity.

What are some of the cost implications for the car manufacturers in order to realize V2V/V2X/V2I use-cases ?

As far as Android for auto is concerned, it would take a fair amount of time to make its way into the entry-level automobile segment. Just take a case where you do not use Android, even in such a scenario, you need to have the silicon, an in-house R&D team, an operating system like Linux, middleware, etc. i.e. You need a significant number of engineers, hence a good amount of R&D cost is involved. Also, as mentioned earlier the number of features in the car always keeps on increasing. Hence, if you need to have your own in-house infotainment system [in absence of Android], the R&D cost itself would look similar or even lesser with a platform like Android.

Whether it is V2V, V2X, V2I, there is a lot of data that would be used to ensure that the objective is met. How secure are these protocols and how do two vehicles from different manufacturers talk to each other ensuring that there is no breach of important data ?

In case of V2V and V2I scenarios, the information is almost anonymous. For example, if a car is driving ahead of another vehicle [on a freeway], either of the vehicles can transmit information that is generic in nature and is useful for both the parties. It could transmit road-related data, climatic data, etc. There is no personal or confidential information exchanged between the two of them.

The information is completely momentary and the moment you get off the freeway, the information is gone. This data is non-threating in nature and hence, we need not worry when such data is sent over V2V/V2I channels. Also, in order to ensure that the necessary security protocols have adhered, the exchanged data goes through an approved/certified channel and it is almost impossible to fake the information. There has been a significant amount of effort that is spent to ensure that the information [irrespective of its nature] is tamper-proof and all the necessary security measures are taken.

The second part is about ‘Telematics’ i.e. the information that is shared between your car and the cloud infrastructure. This exchange has nothing to do with the co-operative network, but it is more about the route that it takes for transmission of the data. You can poll a lot of peripherals on the car to get data about the health of the car, battery, fuel, etc. This data is completely owned by the car owner but sometimes by accident, you agree to share this information in which case, this data can be used by third-party companies for targeted advertising. For example, in the current scenario, there are many cases where a particular company does not charge the consumer to use their services but instead use their data to push some relevant advertisements, coupons, etc. As a matter of fact, the millennial generation is willing to share such information in lieu of product discounts [only after providing consent].

Can you comment on some of the B2B as well as B2C use cases for the V2V/V2I/V2X technologies ?

Ride-hailing companies are already leveraging these technologies, especially the V2V and V2I to ensure that their vehicle’s health is in-tact so that the riders can enjoy a smooth ride.. They are using onboard telematics to get the necessary information. This also includes details about the driver’s characteristics, which are provided after consent by the car driver e.g. average speed at which the driver drives the car, how many times he over-speeds, angle at which he takes turns, how many times he jumps signals, etc.

This information can be used by all the necessary parties involved in the journey i.e. the car driver to improve his driving skills and average customer ratings. It can be used by the ride-hailing company to ensure that they have the best drivers on-board thereby providing a superior customer experience and it gives an additional parameter to the customer on basis on which they can rate their journey. This is currently under testing by a couple of ride-hailing companies for their premium car segment.

How wireless communications and WLAN technology have evolved over the years to be well-suited for V2X communication, due to its low latency and the ability to communicate instantly. Can you also touch upon DSRC [Dedicated Short Range Communication] ?

This is one of the points that we have discussed earlier about the co-operative network. There are a couple of emerging technologies like DSRC and Cellular V2X [CV2X] and each of them has its pros & cons. As per our understanding, the CV2X is much better-designed technology and has better technology roadmap. DSRC is loosely based on the WLAN/WiFi technology and the base standards remain the same. On the other hand, CV2X is based on the Cellular LTE technology. The US government is gearing towards usage of DSRC for V2V/V2X use cases and with wider adoption, the governments across the world would mandate what technology should be used further down the line.

As expected, both these technologies have very low latency due to nature of the use cases associated with the vehicle. This is the overall landscape of the Intelligent Transport System [ITS], both from the technical and non-technical perspective. As an organization, we are working on both these technologies and are gearing up for testing with some of our automobile clients.

Please walk us through the opportunities in the autonomous driving segment and what are some of the tech and regulatory hurdles being faced by this sector ?

The single most important requirement of this sector is that the information should be kept safe & secure. In the future, governments would also mandate a certain amount of certification and testing to ensure that there is no compromise on quality. Apart from these, standards would evolve as it autonomous driving becomes mainstream.

Technology is evolving at a very rapid pace, where do see the automobile technology 5~10 years down the line and the role that technology would play to make that dream a reality ?

As far as the automobile sector is concerned, the internal combustion engines occupy 99% of the market share, whereas electric engines have a fairly minuscule market share. However, things would take a drastic turn as we move forward. The trend is likely to change as electric engines would play a much larger role in the overall automobile ecosystem.

Sasken, as an embedded company,is looking at this area very closely but our main focus areas are in the ares of In-car infotainment, Autonomous driving and Telematics. These three pillars would change the entire automobile landscape. Some of the use cases in autonomous and assisted driving might not be directly applicable to a country like India due to the nature of traffic, road conditions, etc. but over a period of time, the entire ecosystem in India would also evolve and we would observe wider adoption.

We thank Mr. Ashwin Ramachandra for sharing his insights with our readers. If you have any questions for Ashwin about autonomous driving, opportunities in V2X/V2V/V2I, etc. please email them here or share them via a comment to this article.

India Electronics and Semiconductor Association [IESA], the premier trade body along with Electronics Sector Skills Council India [ESSCI] get together to roll out IESA Innovation Initiative [I3 Program] – a hands-on electronics engineering pedagogy program leveraging Industry CSR and targeting 100,000 engineering students per year in 5 years.  This was done alongside first edition of TechTronics 2017 – an IESA event focused on emerging technologies, opportunities and innovation in the electronics industry.

IESA and ESSCI are putting together a visionary, transformational education engine to enable the start-up and innovation ecosystem in the country. This initiative is implemented by IESA Talent CIG via National ESDM Technology Research Academy [NETRA]. The vision of NETRA & ESSCI is to Transform Engineering campuses into ESDM Product Innovation Centers [EPIC] through Industry Partnerships.

The program is a reality on ground with proven success model at KLE Tech University, Hubli – where the ideation energy created by the hands-on teaching program touches 400 students/ semester – and has resulted in incubating 38 startups in first 4 years with 9 startups in acceleration stage. Of these 2 startups have crossed a valuation of 100 crores and employ over 1000 persons!

The learning presented to Ministry of Electronics and IT in August has resulted in the program getting a wider visibility – and is being rolled out with due process, in 6 select Universities in North. These shortlisted Universities include Amity University, AKG Engineering College, Bennet University, BM Munjal University, Chitkara University and Manav Rachna Engineering Universtity.

With the select current 6 universities, the initiative is touching over 1500 students in North. By end 2018, NETRA plans to expand to 20 universities with approx. 4000 students by end of 2018.

Ashwini K Aggarwal, Chairman, India Electronics & Semiconductors Association, said

By end of 2022, the program will cover over 100,000 students per annum, creating a huge ideation energy with far reaching impact in the electronics start-up ecosystem. I wish to congratulate the first batch of shortlisted universities –on their successful completion of the pre-launch faculty trainings and are happy to announce initiating support for their incubator/ideation labs.

Adding to this, Dr. Sandeep Garg, President, India Electronics & Semiconductors Association said

IESA & ESSCI has worked together with the Central Government to shortlist the academic partners, do a capability gap analysis and completed a comprehensive cross-stream train-the-trainer workshop for shortlisted 6 institutes. NETRA is creating a talent pool along with the support of other universities to make the students industry ready, by making them learn the skills and technology for future ESDM industry.

N K Mohapatra, CEO, ESSCI commenting on the partnership said

In order to enable the startup and innovation ecosystem in the country, ESSCI has joined hands with IESA to build – and scale – a visionary, transformational hands-on electronics engineering engine for India. India has a flourishing future in the electronics space and global players have started recognizing this as an opportunity for strengthening their footprints in India. With IESA-NETRA as an implementation partner, we want to focus on the aspiring youth, by primarily engaging with universities across India and make students industry ready.

About IESA

IESA is the premier trade body representing the Indian Electronics System Design and Manufacturing [ESDM] industry and has represented it since 2005. It has over 260 members – both domestic and multinational enterprises. IESA is committed towards building global awareness for the Indian ESDM industry and supporting its growth through focused initiatives in developing the ecosystem. To know more, please visit IESA

NI, the provider of systems that enable engineers and scientists to solve the world’s greatest engineering challenges, today successfully hosted the 14th edition of NIDays – an annual conference on graphical system design – in Bangalore. The event was attended by over 700 engineers, scientists, and experts from Industry and Academia who discussed the trends, opportunities and challenges that will enable the future technology to grow faster.

At the seminar, NI India discussed the next generation of LabVIEW software, LabVIEW NXG 1.0, that gets faster engineering insights with instant hardware discovery, integrated data analysis, and interactive data exploration tools. The attendees got to experience LabVIEW NXG 1.0 and LabVIEW 2017 with experts from Applications Engineering and NI RnD. NIDays offered 22 technical & academic track sessions and tutorials along with a wide range of products and application demonstrations.

Speakers and exhibitors from automated test domain joined the event. The diverse set of panelists shared their experiences and best practices in the areas of processes, management and technology that address the challenges and opportunities for future systems.

Addressing the media at the event, Jayaram Pillai, Managing Director – IndRAA, National Instruments, said

Over the years, we have partnered with local and global experts in our Alliance program, constantly striving to innovate and evolve with every challenge and opportunity that comes our way. With technology growing sooner that predicted, it is inspiring to see all the future ready innovation and products at this year’s NIDays. It gives me immense pride to witness the passion and determination from the engineering community and I look forward to see what’s next.

Commenting on the success of the event, Shelley Gretlein, NI Vice President of Corporate Marketing, National Instruments, said

As we are racing through the 21st century, where technological progression is faster than ever before, the demand for faster and smarter applications is essential. We help our customers to keep up with the pace by providing industry trends impacting the industry along with actionable insights. Our open, software-centric platform aids in developing cutting-edge innovative solutions in areas such as machine learning applications, wireless technology, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and transportation. Now we can truly be prepared for our future.

Presented at NIDays, NI’s Trend Watch 2018 examined the technological advances propelling towards a future faster than ever before along with some of the biggest challenges engineers face looking ahead to 2018. Five key topics were explored –

  • Machine Learning –  Explores the development of Intelligent nodes across manufacturing machines, test systems, and industrial assets that will provide the data needed to build better products and make better operational decisions
  • Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) – Predicts that Industries will have to adopt to IIoT to maximize uptime, optimize performance, and drive product and process innovation.
  • 5G – Signifies a generational transformation that will provide untethered experience with much faster data, shorter network response times (lower latency), instant access anywhere and everywhere, and the capacity for billions of devices.
  • Vehicles Electrification – Discusses the reliance on power electronics and electric motor drives that adds complexity to control systems.
  • Breaking Moore’s Law – Industries will demonstrate each scaling challenge with an innovation in alternative architectures seemingly ending processing advancements

The new range of products presented at the event includes LabVIEW NXG 1.0, bridging the gap between configuration-based software and custom programming languages, Vehicle Radar Test System [VRTS] delivering object simulation and radar measurement capabilities for engineers testing autonomous driving technology, and ATE Core Configurations which supply core mechanical, power and safety infrastructure to help users accelerate the design and build of automated test systems in industries ranging from semiconductor and consumer electronics to aerospace and automotive.

National Instruments is hosting NIDays Conference and Exhibition, the ultimate learning experience that unites the brightest minds in engineering and science. This year, NIDays India will take place at ITC Gardenia on 26th October 2017.

Image Source – NI Days

At NIDays, scientists and engineers will learn about the latest technology to accelerate productivity for software defined systems in test, measurement and control, in a full day of interactive, technical and networking sessions from industry leaders and NI experts.

Hosted by National Instruments, NIDays is an event ideal for engineers, scientists and academicians, supplying the tools and knowledge to develop applications faster and smarter. This years Thought Leadership Keynotes aim to inspire, giving those in attendance a glimpse at the latest, cutting-edge innovations that demonstrate how engineers and scientists use NI technology to change and improve the world we live in.

The morning keynote Impacting Today’s Business, demonstrates how the NI platform is accelerating innovation in applications ranging from transportation safety, wireless communication, automated test and the IIoT. In the afternoon, see how NI continues the LabVIEW legacy with the evolution of the world’s most productive and efficient engineering software, in the keynote A Glimpse into The Future.

Attendees can tailor the event to their specific industry, application or interest and can choose from a vast array of Targeted Application Area Tracks including IIoT, Test & Measurement, Automotive, Academics and Software advancements. Test engineers and managers can take advantage of unique opportunity in form of a test leadership panel which will have leaders in test and measurement come and share their experiences and best practices for improving the impact of test.

To register for NIDays, please visit NIDays Registration Page

National Instruments (NI), the provider of platform-based systems that enable engineers and scientists to solve the world’s greatest engineering challenges has announced the WLAN Test Toolkit 17.0 with support for Draft 1.1 of the IEEE 802.11ax standard.

Combined with NI’s second-generation Vector Signal Transceiver [VST], the WLAN Test Toolkit 17.0 supports 802.11ax waveform generation and analysis for characterization, validation and production test of products, such as RF front end components, wireless modules and user devices, that implement Draft 1.1 of the IEEE 802.11ax standard.

The WLAN Test Toolkit 17.0 empowers designers and engineers with the ability to generate and analyze a wide range of 802.11ax standard-compliant wave-forms, including extended single user, multi-user OFDMA and multi-user Multiple Input, Multiple Output [MIMO] with per-user configuration and measurement results. The toolkit helps users solve demanding new access point test cases by generating signals that simulate multi-user environments, including per-user impairments. Engineers can also use the new software to generate trigger frames to test the real-time response of client devices and make power pre-correction and relative center frequency measurements.

Charles Schroeder, VP of RF Marketing at NI said

As the standardization and evolution of 802.11ax continues, engineers require a software-centric test approach that can keep pace with the latest standard features and challenging new test cases. Taking advantage of NI’s modular platform and second-generation VST can help users lower their cost of test and reduce time to market.

With the WLAN Test Toolkit 17.0 and second-generation VST, engineers can configure up to 8*8 MIMO systems in a single PXI chassis. Users can also expect EVM measurements better than -50 dB, leading to rigorous device characterization and reliable test results. Furthermore, engineers can control their systems with the toolkit’s generation and analysis soft-front panels, and benefit from extensive LabVIEW, C and .NET system design software APIs and example code when programming and automating their systems.

The WLAN Test Toolkit 17.0 expands NI’s wide-ranging product portfolio for testing 802.11a/b/g/j/n/p/ac/ax, Bluetooth, 2G, 3G, 4G, FM/RDS, GNSS and low-power Internet of Things (IoT) wireless standards. NI’s platform-based approach helps ensure that users can update their existing PXI RF test systems to support 802.11ax device testing with a simple software update, and continue to do so as the 802.11ax standardization process evolves. Engineers can take advantage of this smarter approach to RF test to help lower their cost of test and better prepare for future connectivity and cellular standardization initiatives, such as 5G.

For more information, please visit 80211ax on NI

National Instruments, the provider of platform-based systems that enable engineers and scientists to solve the world’s greatest engineering challenges, has mentored Anuj Verma and Shlok Jhawar [Age: 14 years respectively], students of Delhi Public School, Bengaluru in successfully creating a 4-wheeled, all-terrain, multi-purpose robot named, Recon Rover.

In their quest to do something for the society, these budding engineers aspired and built a Disaster Recovery and Surveillance Robot, Recon Rover, that can be used for surveillance during disasters and natural calamities. This robot incorporates data from various actuators and sensors in order to give the users the best control and accurate data from areas struck by natural calamities.

The robot uses ultrasonic sensors to automatically avoid obstacles and prevent crash along with sensing the presence of humans stuck in disaster zones. It sends real time images and data from the disaster site while being controlled remotely.

Anuj and Shlok are class VIII students of Delhi Public School, Bengaluru. They want to pursue robotics and electronics engineering later in their careers. They had earlier participated in NIYantra, NI’s annual Student Design contest, with a simple prototype of their product. They were successful in getting noticed by NI experts and since then have been closely working with the team in shaping up their final product using NI LabVIEW [system design software] and NI myRIO [embedded hardware device for students]. National Instruments provides hardware and software platform that not only helps professional scientists and engineers to solve complex applications, but also these budding engineers to envisage and build systems having great social impact.

Commenting on the success of these students, Aditi Chauhan, Marketing Manager-India, National Instruments, said

National Instruments has equipped scientists and engineers, with tools that accelerate the development of smart measurement systems and embedded control systems. This mission of ours extends into education, to serve budding scientists and engineers with access to the same advanced tools and technologies. These technologies help students to quickly realize and validate, solutions to real-world problems. We are particularly proud of Anuj and Shlok who at such a young age have envisioned a product which can make disaster recovery faster without putting anyone at risk. Over the years, we have partnered with various schools and colleges and helped many aspiring engineers solve pertinent engineering challenges. In the same way, we will continue our engagement with these two promising students and help them with their future endeavors.

Anuj Verma said

Even with advanced technology into play, rescue operations are often slow resulting in mass panic. The biggest challenge which rescue teams face is that of accessibility. When disaster strikes a place which is remote and hard to access, getting any information can be challenging. To address this issue, we created the Recon Rover, with a highly-advanced user interface which can be controlled very easily. NI provided us access to various NI tools required to make this product flexible and scalable. With NI’s help, we were able to solve various challenges which we faced in the product development stage.

Shlok Jhawar added

Today, rescue teams go into disaster zones without knowing what lies ahead. This also puts their lives at risk. Recon Rover created using NI’s LabVIEW platform, can not only solve this problem but can also reduce cost of manpower. NI LabVIEW, being a powerful and user friendly platform, has helped us turn our thoughts into a successful application. It is also better than other platforms as it can be easily interfaced with several different hardware platforms, not restricting it to only NI platforms. We were happy to get constant support from NI’s team who have helped us in our product development process.

As a part of its Academic program, NI organizes an annual student design competition, NIYANTRA, where it mentors hundreds of students, equips them with NI hardware, software and guidance that is required for their projects. Some of these students are really motivated to take their idea to prototype. NI further makes this possible through its various initiatives aimed at enabling SMEs and future entrepreneurs with technology access, startup assistance and ecosystem support. Also, NI, with a rich ecosystem of industry, academia, partners and consultants, encourages a continuous collaboration between these stakeholders that fosters business opportunities for all of them.

Xilinx have launched the Embedded Vision Developer Zone for software, hardware, and system developers to accelerate their productivity and build All Programmable, differentiated Embedded Vision applications. Through the Embedded Vision Developer Zone, Xilinx is providing a one-stop location to jump start the development of next-generation vision systems employing sensor fusion, advanced computer vision algorithms, and real-time object detection and analytics capabilities based on machine learning techniques.

Central to the Embedded Vision Developer Zone is a pool of engineering resources comprised of optimized libraries for software development, vision IP for hardware developers, projects, and tutorials from Xilinx, Alliance Program Members, and community developers. All development resources are compatible with Xilinx FPGAs and All Programmable SoCs, including Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoCs combining four ARM CortexA53 APUs, two ARM Cortex-R5 Real time Processors, an ARM Mali-400 MP2 GPU, an HEVC Video Codec supporting 4Kp60 resolution, programmable logic, and programmable interfaces.

Jeff Bier, founder of the Embedded Vision Alliance said

Product developers are embracing embedded vision at an accelerating pace. From smart surveillance cameras to autonomous vehicles, just about everything needs to see something. Squeezing vision into tight cost and power budgets presents unique challenges to embedded vision developers. Providing them with a dedicated place to find a wide range of resources relevant to their applications is an important step in enabling more developers to meet these challenges.

For additional information, please visit the Embedded Vision Developer Zone by visiting the or watch this short video.

About Xilinx

Xilinx is the leading provider of All Programmable FPGAs, SoCs, MPSoCs, and 3D ICs. Xilinx uniquely enables applications that are both software defined and hardware optimized powering industry advancements in Cloud Computing, 5G Wireless, Embedded Vision and Industrial IoT. For more information, visit Xilinx

National Instruments (NI), the provider of systems that enable engineers and scientists to solve the world’s greatest engineering challenges, successfully hosted the 13th edition of NIDays – an annual conference on graphical system design – in Bangalore. The event was attended by over 500 engineers, scientists, and experts from Industry and Academia who discussed the trends, opportunities and challenges that lie in the future of connected systems.

At the seminar, NI India launched the latest version of its flagship product, LabVIEW 2016, with enhancements in acquiring, processing and managing data from remote data acquisition systems. NIDays offered 21 technical sessions and tutorials along with a wide range of products and application demonstrations. Speakers and exhibitors from various industries joined the event. The diverse set of panellists shared their ideas on trends in communication systems, embedded electronics, security and automated test systems that address the challenges and opportunities for the next generation of connected systems.

Addressing the media at the event, Jayaram Pillai, Managing Director – National Instruments, said

Over the last 18 years in India, we have built a strong ecosystem of partners, proficient developers and successful customers and this ecosystem has enabled our customers to innovate. It’s inspiring to see the amount of innovation and true technological advancements at this year’s NIDays. The continuous dedication and leadership I’ve seen from the engineering community is awe-inspiring and I’m excited for the future of engineering.

Commenting on the success of the event, Ajit Gokhale, Senior VP Global Marketing, National Instruments, said

As the world becomes more and more connected, the immense amount of data available today provides the engineers and scientists with a wide variety of insights, but getting the right insight can be a challenge! We continue to help our customers stay ahead of the curve through our platform-based approach and cutting-edge technology advances in application areas such as the Internet of Things (IoT) or the development of 5G networks by creating tools that help engineers solve real world challenges, accurately, efficiently and rapidly.

NI’s tools have proven to be instrumental in the success of a lot of Indian customers and their applications. This year, NI added various new products to the list of these tools aimed at accelerating the productivity of engineers and researchers working in the areas of IoT, 5G, industrial automation, etc. Some of these tools enable applications that previously seemed too ambitious because of their complexities.

The new range of products launched at the event includes:

  • High-performance PXI instrumentation for processing and sensing at the edge
  • MIMO Application Framework which provides wireless researchers with a fully open reference solution to accelerate 5G prototyping
  • Early access technology platform for TSN which delivers mechanisms to create distributed, synchronized, hard real-time systems over standard Ethernet
  • NI Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) Simulator which helps drive down the cost of test for customers
  • Software-centric NI PXI Digital Pattern Instrument used by semiconductor characterization and production test engineers to drive down the cost of their tests and ensure product quality

 

To accelerate engineering skills development in India, NI also hosted its annual Engineering Impact Awards 2016 aimed at recognizing the most innovative projects based on NI software and hardware and NIYANTRA awards 2016 recognizing the best graphical system design created by budding engineering students.

Engineering Impact Awards

NI’s annual technical application contest – Engineering Impact Awards, enabled NI customers to showcase innovative projects based on NI software and hardware. The contest this year had a total of 40 teams and the winners got a chance to participate in the Global Engineering Impact Awards held in Austin annually during NIWeek.

This year, Captronics won in the ‘Application of the Year’ and ‘NI Alliance Partner of the year’ categories. They developed an application to determine the location of a bullet on a target system using NI CompactRIO Platform. National Aerospace Laboratories won in the ‘Systems Category’ for their design and development of structural health monitoring system comprising of SyncVIEW, DiagnoseVIEW, QuickVIEW for aircraft composite structures. Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad won in the ‘Academic Category’ for developing a closed loop control of three phase inverter voltage using NI LabVIEW FPGA and cRIO.

Niyantara Awards

In order to foster the spirit of innovation in engineering students and expose them to the essence of experiential education through a contest, NI hosted its annual student design contest NIYantra 2016. This contest, held over a period of six months, helped the undergraduate engineers design their project ideas and convert them into working models using NI hardware and software. 

This year, NIYantra 2016 witnessed submissions from more than 950+ teams, out of which 18 teams made it to the finals. The results of the competition were announced at NIDays 2016. Sri Eshwar College of Engineering won the NIYANTRA 2016 awards for creating an innovative path detector designed for visually challenged. Teams from Vivekanand Education Society’s Institute Of Technology and K.J. Somaiya College of Engineering were the runners-up. The team from Kumaraguru College of Technology was also recognized for their efforts.