NIDays brings together engineers, scientists, and industry professionals to learn about the NI software-centric platform for accelerating development and increasing productivity in test, measurement, and control systems. During the event Jayaram Pillai, Regional Sales Director – IndRA, National Instruments, discusses with Devendra Kumar on NIDays objectives and how does it empower engineers and increase access to NI technologies. Excerpts:
ELE Times: How do you define NI in changing technology scenario of Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Autonomous Driving and the similar current technology trends?
Jayaram Pillai: Top technologies are changing at the component levels – like semiconductor is getting more powerful, more and more sensors are getting inducted into products, MEMS, microphones are having 14-15 sensors into it. Communication, connectivity and 5G technologies are changing fast. ADAS could be underlined technology for autonomous vehicle. These are all driven because of the technology change and these technologies are converging into one platform. The change in technology at highest level allowing convergence in the automotive technology. It also allows to increases the complexity of the systems. The cars are becoming complex and intelligent due to convergence of these technologies.
ELE Times: How do you analyze NIDays role over the years across the countries?
Jayaram Pillai: It brings thousands of engineers, scientists, teaching faculties together at a common platform to see what new is happening. We have some great sessions and some live demonstrations of best in class technologies that people are trying to solve today. Also there is a great networking for everyone.
ELE Times: What is the nature of establishment of NI in India?
Jayaram Pillai: We have a development centre, business people into sales, marketing professionals and customer support department. We have all the functions available needed to ensure the customer success.
ELE Times: Rooftop mobile towers are hazardous for the human health. The intensity of 5G transmission would even be much higher. Is there any standardization or instrument to lower the radiation?
Jayaram Pillai: 4G is already implemented, but the 5G has certain technologies that steers the transmission to your phone only, it does not transmit across, if that information is sent to your phone the beam would be steered only to the phone. It allows you to create lot more devices connected to one network. Because of the bandwidth requirement if you don’t steer to the phone you will transmit more energy which is hazardous to the human health. We have to be sure that before manufacturing, the devices should go through several tests. We are a test solution company. We test devices. Before the devices are deployed for the social use, it should be tested for the level of radiation it might have.
ELE Times: With the current growth of 33% annual, what target you have set for yourself for the coming years?
Jayaram Pillai: We have focused on certain industries, which we feel is critical for our growth. For example, semicon in India is not that high, just because we don’t have semiconductor manufacturing. But there is a lot of semiconductor validation happens. If you look from the revenue stand point, it’s not the driver for us, but there are spaces on the other hand like automotive industry, aerospace & defence, transportation, academic research, which are doubling down.
ELE Times: What are the major challenges working with Indian clients and other market?
Jayaram Pillai: The need for our customers to test their devices in full is a challenge. The time is changing very fast. The need of the customer to put the product out in the market is faster and the device is getting complex every day. Different needs are arising and sometimes it is very hard to test it out. The cost of test is high and keeps one awake at night.
Regional Sales Director – IndRA
National Instruments
