NI Engineering Innovation Center supports development of EV batteries and ADAS.
If you wanted to build a new test center to support electrification and autonomy in the auto industry, you’d be hard pressed to find a better place for it than Michigan. The Wolverine State has been a central hub of automaking for over a century, so it’s a fitting home for a new NI (formerly National Instruments) Engineering Innovation Center.
The center is intended to help automotive engineers collaborate with NI’s experts for projects involving EV components, particularly batteries, as well as advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS), according to an NI release.
“Efficient time to market and test operations are critical to ensuring the acceleration of EV and ADAS programs as they become increasingly complex to test,” said Drita Roggenbuck, senior vice president and general manager of transportation at NI in the same release.
Asked whether the center will focus exclusively on EV components and ADAS subsystems, Jeff Philips, director of marketing for the transportation business unit at NI, told engineering.com, “The investment profile for OEMs is driving investments for ICE vehicles down, but these are still a critical part of how they’re meeting the bottom line today and they’re driving changes throughout the entire vehicle design. Our solutions at the Michigan Innovation Center have a primary focus on EV components and ADAS subsystems, but they span the vehicle as well.”
Philips gave us a breakdown of the available resources at the Novi-based test center, which includes a Battery Lab with a high-power cycler and environmental chamber; a Power-Conversion Lab with signal-level inverter HIL; a Vehicle Software and Electronics Lab with ALIARO automotive electronics HIL, automotive ECU production test and a desktop HIL of a truck mirror ECU.
The ADAS Garage includes:
- ADAS/AD Record in Valeo Car
- ADAS Data Ingest with SeaGate
- ADAS HIL
- S.E.A. V2X Sniffer
- Radar Production Test
“At this facility, our team can help with the challenge of finding effective ways to test a battery and help our customers overcome problems that emerge in the form of managing the lab, managing the power in the lab, managing all the equipment in the lab and managing all the data that is being produced,” says Philips.
The Engineering Innovation Center in Novi represents the latest NI innovation center located in a major region for automaking, with others based in Austin, Munich, Shanghai and Tokyo. According to Philips, “All of these Innovation Centers contain the core laboratory infrastructure of solutions, but the Michigan Center integrates this with best-in-class collaborative design principles.”
