Hardware in the loop

National Instruments'

 gives control system design and test engineers a link between the NI LabVIEW graphical development environment and The MathWorks Simulink software.

Engineers can use configuration-based functionality in the LabVIEW Simulation Interface Toolkit 3.0 to create custom hardware-in-the-loop test systems with the National Instruments I/O of their choice, including CAN, reconfigurable I/O (RIO) and CompactRIO FPGA-based I/O, in addition to existing NI data acquisition I/O support. The software’s configuration dialog allows engineers to generate VIs for real-time implementation by mapping I/O channels to model inports and outports.

With the LabVIEW Simulation Interface Toolkit, engineers can build custom LabVIEW user interfaces to view and control a Simulink model during run time. Engineers working with very large models now can use the LabVIEW Simulation Interface Toolkit to remap controls and indicators to different model parameters and signals during run time. With this ability, they can scale user interface size and complexity by reusing controls and indicators.

For engineers with large, complex models, the LabVIEW Simulation Interface Toolkit now automatically imports model subsystems with different rates defined in Simulink and schedules separate threads in the LabVIEW Real-Time Module.

For complex systems, engineers can take advantage of the efficiency that rate monotonic thread scheduling offers with a single processor rather than using a multiprocessor system. Also, in a single step, engineers using the LabVIEW Simulation Interface Toolkit 3.0 can simultaneously modify numerous parameter values and seamlessly test multiple conditions during run time.

By combining the LabVIEW Simulation Interface Toolkit 3.0 with the CompactRIO embedded control system, engineers can use built-in FPGA functionality to create real-world implementations of control models for rapid control prototyping.

Engineers also can take advantage of the built-in FPGA functionality and PXI processor using NI R Series devices that integrate with the new toolkit for creating large-scale hardware-in-the-loop test systems.