NI Connect Reaffirms Commitments to LabVIEW, AI

May 21, 2024

Blog

There have been many changes at NI recently, particularly with the fairly recent acquisition of the company by Emerson. But one thing that appears to remain unchanged is the company’s allegiance to test and measurement.

Digging down a little further, you find that the commitment to the company’s key product, LabVIEW, remains unwavering. That point was made quite clear at the annual NI Connect event, occurring this week in Austin, TX, where NI has been headquartered for decades.

By taking parts of LabVIEW to the open-source community, NI is taking the power to the people. According to Rudy Sengupta, Vice President and General Manager of NI’s Enterprise Software Business, “LabVIEW users spend a lot of time trying to make the software better for their applications, improving their workflow and efficiency. We believe that the community has some interesting ideas, and we’re excited by that.”

The Right Software Bundle

The company is also making a commitment to LabVIEW Plus, which bundles various software components, but not just to offer a variety of software products. It’s meant to provide the right tools at the right time to accelerate the design of a specific application area. Investments come in the form of both people and products, and the training that’s required for both. That includes building out forums for the engineering community, and providing valuable spaces for users to converge and innovate.

A byproduct of this strategy is getting a better understanding of its users, from its users. Says Sengupta, “We are making sure that we understand, directly from our customers, where they want us to innovate, so they can innovate.”

All In On AI

The second point that NI is making at its NI Connect event is that the company is all in on AI. They’re infusing it into every facet of the testing process. One of the aspects I found interesting is that the company is putting its money where its mouth is: they use their own AI tools to design their internal products. That’s true for everything from testing at the Edge to testing EVs, in both cases using AI to make faster and more accurate decisions.

In some instances, the AI would take voice input, possibly as simple as some needed measurements, and turn it into LabVIEW code. It can also help in report generation, or to find anomalies and outliers in your data.

Then there is the unintended AI use. “There's obviously the way that we expect the community to use AI. But that’s not always what happens, as designers are really good at innovating,” says Sengupta. “We want to make sure that we have the right guardrails in place for them. So, we've come up with some best practices, starting with, we want the decision making, the ultimate control, in the hands of the user.”

In addition to the keynotes, NI Connect features a series of live demos and educational sessions, some with hands-on participation. All technical sessions are led by NI engineering experts and partners.