National Instruments Honors Engineering
and Science Innovation With 2011 Graphical System Design
Achievement Awards
Application of the Year Award Presented to the Max Planck
Institute of Quantum Optics for Using NI FlexRIO and LabVIEW to
Control Motion of a Single Atom
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NEWS RELEASE Aug. 8, 2011 National Instruments honored 17
innovative applications developed by engineers, scientists and
researchers from around the world at the fourth annual Graphical
System Design Achievement Awards. At the award ceremony
held during the annual NIWeek conference and exhibition,
winners from eight application categories ranging from robotics and
academic research to advanced control systems and embedded
monitoring were recognized for using NI technology and a graphical
system design approach to develop solutions to critical engineering
and science challenges. The 2011 Application of the Year Award was
presented to Christian Sames of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum
Optics for developing a custom time digitizer to study fundamental
quantum properties of light-matter interaction.
The Graphical System Design Achievement awards recognize the
engineers and scientists who are using the NI graphical system
design approach to develop and deploy groundbreaking solutions to
some of the worlds greatest engineering and scientific challenges,
said Dr. James Truchard, president, CEO and cofounder of National
Instruments. These engineers and scientists are testing the
boundaries of innovation to create products and applications that
can have significant impact on the world.
The Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics was honored for its
achievement in building a powerful and versatile custom time
digitizer that makes it possible to implement real-time execution
of time-critical tasks in hardware. By using NI FlexRIO and the NI LabVIEW FPGA Module, Max Planck
engineers implemented feedback control for systems as small as a
single atom and performed fast decision-making processes on time
scales of one nanosecond based on the detection of single photons.
This innovation makes it possible for researchers to study the
fundamental quantum properties of light-matter interaction.
The Green Engineering Award was presented to Vestas Wind Systems
and CIM Industrial Systems A/S for designing and testing the
durability of a wind turbine drivetrain. By using LabVIEW software and NI CompactRIO hardware, the test system
increases the structural reliability of the gearbox and contributes
to longer uptimes and lower turbine costs, resulting in the lowest
cost per kilowatt hour in the wind energy market.
Kitasato University received the Humanitarian Award for developing
the worlds first real-time 3-D medical imaging system. Using
field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based processing made possible
by NI FlexRIO, the team computed more than 700,000 512-point fast
Fourier transforms (FFTs) every second to achieve 3-D imaging. This
medical instrument can potentially detect cancer during medical
checkups without requiring the patient to undergo the severe stress
of a biopsy.
More than 300 authors from 20 countries submitted entries to the
Graphical System Design Achievement Awards, making this years pool
of applicants the largest and most competitive in the awards
history. The applications were judged by a panel of technical
experts, industry specialists, technical trade publication editors
and National Instruments executives. The panel judged the
applications on criteria ranging from how technically challenging
the solution was to how well the benefits of adopting graphical
system design for the project were articulated.
To learn more about the Graphical System Design Achievement Awards
and to view a comprehensive list of this years winners, readers can
visit www.ni.com/gsdawards.
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