MANHASSET, NY — National Instruments has brought out its LabVIEW Robotics 2009 graphical system design platform for robotic and autonomous control systems.

LabVIEW Robotics 2009 can import code from other languages including C/C++, .m files and VHDL, and communicate with a wide variety of sensors using built-in drivers for everything from LIDAR, IR, sonar and GPS devices.

New robotics IP eases implementation to real-time and embedded hardware for obstacle avoidance, inverse kinematics and search algorithms to help an autonomous system or robot plan an optimal path.

When combined with NI CompactRIO or NI sngle board RIO devices, LabVIEW Robotics 2009 provides a complete development platform for designing robotic control systems.

The reconfigurable I/O (RIO) architecture incorporates a real-time processor, an FPGA and a wide range of I/O, including analog, digital, motion and communication.

"Robotics 101 Resource Kit" with robotics tutorials, webcasts, videos and case studies can be downloaded.

LabVIEW Robotics 2009 prices start at $1,999.