Virtual Instrumentation - Changing the Face of Measurement and Automation

For testing cars at automotive companies, or controlling production and quality at manufacturing plants, engineers and scientists need flexible, and cost-effective solutions for test and measurement. To address these said needs, a different way was introduced about 30 years ago with virtual instrumentation to solve the test and the measurement problems. At present, virtual instrumentation has reached the mainstream acceptance. It is used in thousands of applications around the world in industries from automotive to consumer electronics to oil and gas.

The virtual instrumentation concept is that an engineer can use software running on a computer combined with instrumentation hardware to define a custom, built-to-order test and measurement solution. The vision of virtual instrumentation revolutionized the way, the engineers and the scientists work, delivering solutions at a faster development with time, lower costs, and greater flexibility.

Components of Virtual Instrumentation

The heart of any virtual instrument is the flexible software. An innovative engineer, or scientist applying domain expertise to customize the measurement and control application, builds every virtual instrument upon flexible, and powerful software. The result is a user-defined instrument specific to the applications’ needs. This software enables the engineers and the scientists to interface with real-world signals, analyze data for meaningful information, and share results and applications. 

Figure 1. Virtual instrumentation combines productive software, modular I/O, and scalable platforms.

Another virtual instrumentation component is modular I/O for measurements, which requires higher performance, resolution, or speeds. Advanced Modular Instrument hardware use the latest commercial technologies including ADC, DACs, FPGAs, and PC busses to provide high resolution and throughput for measurements from 7 1/2 digits DC to 2.7 GHz. In combination with powerful software, the engineers can create custom-defined measurements and sophisticated analysis routines. 

The third virtual instrumentation element using commercial platforms, and often enhanced with accurate synchronization, ensures that virtual instrumentation takes advantage of the very latest computer capabilities and data transfer technologies. This element delivers virtual instrumentation on a long-term technology base that scales with the high investments made in processors, buses, and more.

NI LabVIEW is among the most reliable virtual instrumentation software platforms with a graphically developed environment. Besides, these components empower the engineers and the scientists to create their own solutions with virtual instrumentation. 

Virtual instrumentation has gradually increased the addressable applications through continuous software innovation, and hundreds of measurement hardware devices. Having influenced millions of test and automation professionals, today, it is winning over experts in the control and design domains. Virtual Instrumentation is rapidly revolutionizing the functions of control design, distributed control, data logging, design verification, prototyping, simulation and more. 

Virtual Instrumentation for Test

Test has been a long-proven field for virtual instrumentation. More than 25, 000 companies with the test and the measurement companies in majority use virtual instrumentation. Still, the need for test has never been a great deal. With the pace of innovation, new and differentiated products are in demand to market quickly. 
These conditions drive new validation, verification, and manufacturing test needs. A test platform that can keep pace with this innovation is not optional, rather an essential. The platform must include rapid test development tools adaptable enough to be used throughout the product development flow, high-throughput test capabilities, and precise and synchronized measurement abilities. 
Virtual instrumentation is an innovative solution to these challenges. It combines rapid development software and modular along with flexible hardware to create user-defined test systems. 
Virtual Instrumentation for Industrial I/O and Control

Both PCs and PLCs play an important role in control and industrial applications. PCs bring greater software flexibility and capability, while PLCs deliver outstanding ruggedness and reliability. But as control needs become more complex, there is a recognized need to accelerate the capabilities while retaining the ruggedness and reliabilities. 

Independent industry experts have recognized the need for tools that can meet the increasing needs for more complex, dynamic, adaptive, and algorithm-based control. The PAC is the industry’s request and virtual instrumentation’s answer.

Virtual Instrumentation for Design

The same design engineers, who use a wide variety of software design tools, must use hardware to test prototypes. Commonly, there is no good interface between the design phase and testing/validation phase, which means that the issues often discovered in the testing phase require a design-phase reiteration.



In reality, the development process has two very distinct and separate stages – design and test, which are two individual entities. In the design side, EDA tool vendors undergo tremendous pressure to interoperate from the increasing semiconductor design and manufacturing group complexity requirements. Engineers and scientists are demanding the capability to reuse designs from one tool in other tools as products go from schematic design to simulation to physical layout. Similarly, test system development is evolving toward a modular approach. The gap between these two worlds has traditionally been neglected--the first noticeable in the new product prototype stage. 

Systems with intrinsic-integration properties are easily extensible and adapt to increasing product functionality. When new tests are required, the engineers simply add new modules to the platform to make the measurements. Virtual instrumentation software flexibility and virtual instrumentation hardware modularity make virtual instruments--a necessity to accelerate the development cycle.

A Future with Virtual Instrumentation 

Today, to meet the ever-increasing demand to innovate and deliver ideas and products faster, scientists and engineers are turning to advanced electronics, processors, and software. Consider a modern cell phone. Most contain the latest features of the last generation including audio, a phone book, and text messaging capabilities. New versions include a camera, MP3 player, Bluetooth networking and Internet browsing.

The increased functionality of advanced electronics is possible because devices have become more software centric. However, this increase in functionality comes with a price. Upgraded functionality introduces the possibility of unforeseen interaction, or error. So, just as device-level software helps rapidly to develop and extend functionality, design and test instrumentation also must adapt to verify the improvements. 

The only way to meet these demands is to use test and control architectures that are also software centric. Because virtual instrumentation uses highly productive software, modular I/O, and commercial platforms, it is uniquely positioned to keep pace with the required new idea and product development rate. 

Virtual instrumentation has, thus, been widely adopted in test and measurement areas and is rapidly making headway in control and design areas. The benefits that have accelerated test development are beginning to accelerate control and design. Engineers and scientists, who are increasing demands for virtual instrumentation in hopes of efficiently addressing worldwide demand, are the driving force behind this acceleration.

About Author

The author, Jayaram Pillai is the Managing Director of National Instruments (NI), India, a technology pioneer and leader in virtual instrumentation.