IEN: How can/will the sector answer industry demand for increased automation and flexibility?
Wilkinson: One of the main things the industry will ask for is the ability to choose best of class components without a fear of incompatibility. For example, in a motion control system there are a variety of components including a motor, a motor amplifier, a controller, and often software. Currently, there are often different manufacturers that specialize in each of those areas. Compatibility among them is often hard to determine, causing some manufacturers to try to make the whole system. A problem with making the whole system is that the manufacturer may be good at some of the components but only mediocre in others. Choosing best of class components enables engineers to get the pieces that are most appropriate for their system but requires the engineer to do more research to ensure compatibility between components. National Instruments created a Motion Partnership Program in an effort to help address this problem by determining compatibility with other third party motion components and passing that information on to the customer.
IEN: Will distributed control architectures continue to displace centralized controls?
Wilkinson: In distributed control there is a new emerging breed of embedded controllers. These systems have the ability to run more PC-like software while maintaining high reliability. They come standard with floating point processors, data logging capabilities, the ability to coexist with other devices on Ethernet, and to communicate real-time data via TCP, email, and web interfaces. Because of the productivity these systems can provide, we will continue to see more applications benefit from distributed control architectures. These systems offer two key advantages. First, because they deal with small components of the overall system, they are easier to program and debug. Second, a distributed control system has multiple devices making control decisions, making it possible to easily create redundant control for critical subsystems and create a system with higher reliability and up time.
IEN: What enhancements can be expected in the software that powers motion technology?
Wilkinson: The next major innovations will come from the software. Developing the software for an application often takes engineers a significant amount of time, especially if the engineer is new to programming or the particular programming application interface he/she is using. Increases in usability of development software that do not take away flexibility will be one of the major innovations in store.
Last year, National Instruments released a software package called NI Motion Assistant as a step in this direction. NI Motion Assistant offers a variety of common motion tasks such as straight-line moves, arc moves, and contour moves that can be configured and added to a sequence. To avoid limiting flexibility, engineers can also use the automatic LabVIEW™ code generation or "code recipe" feature. This feature enables them to either create a complete LabVIEW program or a text file with a series of functions to create a program that performs exactly like their sequence of moves in NI Motion Assistant. This type of feature enables engineers to take advantage of the easy-to-use NI Motion Assistant interface and still have all the necessary flexibility that a full-scale development environment offers.
IEN: How much progress has been made in resolving software and hardware debugging issues? Documentation challenges? Installation headaches?
Wilkinson: Small innovations often make a large impact on the user experience. For example, the recent addition of simple LEDs helps identify hardware errors or when debugging systems indicate when things are plugged in incorrectly. This often helps immensely when developers debug their system. Other innovations are occurring in configuration software. Configuration software is usually used to set up a motion system and is critical for initially getting started on a motion application. One innovation seen in configuration software is simple test panels, such as those in NI MAX, that enable engineers to easily test a motion system without any programming. These panels also include diagnostic virtual LEDs that show the status of things such as limits, axis enable, following error, and other possible errors that could cause the system to prevent motion. This type of interface offers the ability to see if things are connected up correctly without having to worry about actually creating any kind of program.
IEN: What advances do you see in plant floor connectivity? Open standards? Data sharing?
Wilkinson: Open standards for industrial PC platforms, such as PXI, are making integrated systems easier to create. Based on an open standard, PXI is small in size, industrially rugged, and capable of offering high performance motion control integrated with other operations such as machine vision or data acquisition. Because it uses standard components, data sharing between systems is simply done through a network such as Ethernet the same as you would do on a normal PC. A single chassis can contain several different boards, each performing a different operation in the system.
In an effort to help make plant floor connectivity between motion control components easier, NI started a Motion Partner Program. As referenced earlier, one of the purposes of this program is to bring together manufacturers of various components to define connectivity and ensure compatibility between components. Currently, there are 10 members of the program who are mostly manufacturers of high precision stages. Over time, NI hopes to make connectivity in the motion system as easy as possible for engineers on the plant floor.
IEN: Will embedded servers play more of a role in motion control?
Wilkinson: In the future, embedded servers will grow in importance in order to help monitor the status and activity of various machines on the plant floor. Embedded servers can help engineers by publishing diagnostics that, in theory, can be accessed anywhere in the world where there is an Internet connection. However, currently these would be more of a luxury that most engineers feel may not be critical to their operation. Many engineers and managers may also fear that data from these could possibly be accessible by outsiders who could somehow use it against them. As the technology for embedded servers comes more into the mainstream, it will eventually get to the plant floor.
IEN: Will wireless play a role in motion?
Wilkinson: There may be some role for wireless in motion control but there are several concerns that engineers in a plant type environment might have when considering it. One of these concerns is safely guaranteeing that emergency stops or other safety mechanisms would react in time. As long as the wireless control is only for supervisory control and not time critical operations such as the control loop or monitoring safety switches, then the safety concern may not be as much of an issue. As the technology improves and becomes more mainstream, more engineers will find applications where they can apply motion control. Currently, outside of the plant environment, there are applications that use a form of wireless motion control such as remote controlled aircraft currently used by the military.
IEN: Is Internet-based control gaining any traction?
Wilkinson: Recently, an Internet-based control application was presented at our annual NI Week conference last August. In this application, a team of students designed a control system for remotely controlling an excavator using National Instruments Field Point with embedded LabVIEW Real-Time. The purpose of this project was to dig around dangerous areas where bombs have been stored in the past. These students were able use the Internet to control the excavator, located in Virginia, from a remote station located in Austin, TX. Although this type of technology is still mostly in the research area, it is gaining traction and may be put to use in industrial applications fairly soon if important applications arise.