Bring modern modelling techniques to vehicle design

The MapleSim Connector for VI-CarRealTime allows engineers to incorporate high-fidelity, multidomain models created in MapleSim into the real-time vehicle simulation environment of VI-CarRealTime.

MapleSim, available from Adept Scientific (Letchworth, Herts), is a Modelica-based physical modelling and simulation tool that applies modern techniques to dramatically reduce model development and analysis time while producing fast, high-fidelity simulations. VI-CarRealTime provides a fully validated real-time vehicle simulation environment that automotive engineers can use to optimise vehicle designs and control system performance. By using VI-CarRealTime Vehicle Dynamics engineers can also perform large Design of Experiments (DOE) and multi-objective optimisation studies quickly and easily.

“VI-grade customers can now leverage the intuitive physical modelling environment of MapleSim to create high-fidelity models of vehicle subsystems in a fraction of the time it would take them in other tools,” said Juergen Fett, Managing Director, VI-grade. “Then, they get automatically generated real-time code of the subsystem that they can incorporate into VI-CarRealTime’s full vehicle model, replacing the default subsystem with their own. Not only does this avoid time-consuming and error-prone hand-coding, but MapleSim lets them create extremely detailed models while maintaining real-time simulation speeds. As a result, the simulations’ results are closer to reality which ultimately leads to shorter development cycles and better products.”

“The combination of MapleSim, VI-CarRealTime and the Connector allows for the fast, accurate modelling of automotive subsystems, such as powertrains and drivelines,” said Paul Goossens, Vice President of Applications Engineering at Maplesoft. “Automotive engineers can easily do innovative work, exploring their designs in new and deeper ways, detecting problems earlier in the design cycle, and developing high-quality, practical solutions to their design challenges.”

The MapleSim Connector for VI-CarRealTime is the latest in a growing collection of connector tools and products for MapleSim, which include connectors for Simulink™, LabVIEW™, dSPACE® Systems, C code generation and more.

For more information go to: http://www.adeptscience.co.uk/products/mathsim/maple/tool...

The Maplesoft product range is supplied and supported by Adept Scientific in the UK, Ireland, Scandinavia and the Nordic countries.

About Maplesoft

Maplesoft has over 20 years of experience developing products for technical education and research, offering a solution that applies to every aspect of academic life. Its product suite reflects the philosophy that given great tools, people can do great things.

Maplesoft’s core technology is the World’s most advanced symbolic computation engine which is the foundation for all of its products, including Maple™, the technical computing and documentation environment; MapleSim™, the high-performance, multi-domain modelling and simulation tool for physical systems; and Maple T.A., a web-based system for creating and assessing online tests and assignments.

About VI-grade

VI-grade GmbH is the leading provider of best-in-class software products and services for advanced applications in the field of system level simulation. VI-grade, established in 2005, delivers innovative solutions to streamline the development process from concept to sign-off in the transportation industry, mainly automotive, aerospace, motorcycle, motorsports and railways.

About Adept Scientific plc

Adept Scientific is one of the world's leading suppliers of software and hardware products for research, scientific, engineering and technical applications on desktop computers and has offices in the UK, Germany and throughout the Nordic region. Full details and contact information for all Adept Scientific international offices are available at www.adeptscience.com; or telephone +44 (0)1462 480055.

View the original article here

Doug Engelbart, the visionary who foresaw the modern internet and created the mouse, dies aged 88

Doug Engelbart, founder of the Augmented Research Center (ARC) at SRI and inventor of the computer mouse, has died at the age of 88. Engelbart was one of the first great computer visionaries, and perhaps the first to envision a future where computers, and more importantly networks of computers, augment human intellect. To this end, Engelbart and his fellow researchers at the ARC devised prototypes — in the 1960s! — that could be considered the forerunners of the World Wide Web, Skype, multiple on-screen windows, screen sharing, and the computer mouse.

In 1950, at the ripe old age of 25, Douglas C. Engelbart had an epiphany that high technology had the ability to expand and augment human intelligence. In 1962, after joining the Stanford Research Institute and founding the Augmented Research Center, this epiphany was crystallized into a treatise called Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework. In short, the treatise suggested that we would all be a lot more creative, productive, and intelligent if we had a shared intellectual space. In 1968, Engelbart and his fellow researchers realized this shared intellectual space by creating the NLS (oN-Line System).

Doug Engelbart, holding his original mouse. It used two wheels on the underside to measure the X-Y distance traveled. The ball mouse was also created around the same time, by a German company called Telefunken.

On December 9, Engelbart and 17 researchers working with him at the ARC gave a 100-minute public demonstration of the NLS, which they had been working on since Engelbart’s original treatise was published in 1962. Around 1,000 computer professionals attended the presentation, which would turn out to be the first public debut of the computer mouse (pictured above), hypertext, and screen sharing with built-in video conferencing. This was in 1968, some 16 years before the mouse would be popularized by Apple and Microsoft, and decades before the arrival of the World Wide Web and Skype.

At this point, it’s better if you switch over to the video below, where Engalbert himself, on stage at the San Francisco Convention Center, demonstrates the NLS. If you don’t have time for the full 100-minute demonstration, you should probably skip forward to the 31-minute mark for a good overview of the NLS input devices (mouse and chord keyboard), and the 75-minute mark for the video conferencing and screen sharing/collaboration demo.

This demo, which left the attendees awe-struck, would later be referred to by Silicon Valley dwellers as “the mother of all demos.” In an age when computers were very much still room-sized devices intended for massive computation, NLS suggested that computers, aided by networks, could be used for real-time collaboration between researchers. Looking back, of course, sitting at our computers that are connected to billions of other people via the internet and the World Wide Web, we now know how scarily prescient Engelbart was.

The ARC was funded by DARPA, NASA, and the USAF — and you won’t be surprised, after watching Engelbart’s demo, to hear that the ARC later became one of first nodes of the ARPANET, the precursor of the internet. The first permanent ARPANET link was between the Interface Message Processor (one of the first packet-switched routers) at UCLA and the IMP at SRI. ARC, still headed by Engelbart, then became the first Network Information Center (NIC). (See: Changing the world: DARPA’s top inventions.)

Soon after the excitement of the NLS and ARPANET, however, Engelbart slipped into relative obscurity. Engelbart still firmly believed that networked collaboration was the future, while the rest of the world, including some of his fellow researchers at the ARC, were quickly shifting their towards personal computing. The ARC was eventually sold off a company called Tymshare, which was then acquired by McDonnell Douglas, and with each successive sale Engelbart’s influence waned. Disillusioned, Engelbart eventually retired from McDonnell Douglas in 1986, his vision of a networked intellectual space squeezed out by operational concerns and a lust for larger profits.

Sitting here in 2013, of course, we know that Engelbart’s epiphany wasn’t in vane. Thanks to the World Wide Web, invented in 1993 by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, and continuing efforts in the realms of networking and interfaces, we finally have a network of computers and information that augments human intelligence beyond our wildest imaginations.

View the original article here

The visionary who foresaw the modern internet and created the mouse, dies aged 88

Doug Engelbart, founder of the Augmented Research Center (ARC) at SRI and inventor of the computer mouse, has died at the age of 88. Engelbart was one of the first great computer visionaries, and perhaps the first to envision a future where computers, and more importantly networks of computers, augment human intellect. To this end, Engelbart and his fellow researchers at the ARC devised prototypes — in the 1960s! — that could be considered the forerunners of the World Wide Web, Skype, multiple on-screen windows, screen sharing, and the computer mouse.

In 1950, at the ripe old age of 25, Douglas C. Engelbart had an epiphany that high technology had the ability to expand and augment human intelligence. In 1962, after joining the Stanford Research Institute and founding the Augmented Research Center, this epiphany was crystallized into a treatise called Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework. In short, the treatise suggested that we would all be a lot more creative, productive, and intelligent if we had a shared intellectual space. In 1968, Engelbart and his fellow researchers realized this shared intellectual space by creating the NLS (oN-Line System).

Doug Engelbart, holding his original mouse. It used two wheels on the underside to measure the X-Y distance traveled. The ball mouse was also created around the same time, by a German company called Telefunken. On December 9, Engelbart and 17 researchers working with him at the ARC gave a 100-minute public demonstration of the NLS, which they had been working on since Engelbart’s original treatise was published in 1962. Around 1,000 computer professionals attended the presentation, which would turn out to be the first public debut of the computer mouse (pictured above), hypertext, and screen sharing with built-in video conferencing. This was in 1968, some 16 years before the mouse would be popularized by Apple and Microsoft, and decades before the arrival of the World Wide Web and Skype.

At this point, it’s better if you switch over to the video below, where Engalbert himself, on stage at the San Francisco Convention Center, demonstrates the NLS. If you don’t have time for the full 100-minute demonstration, you should probably skip forward to the 31-minute mark for a good overview of the NLS input devices (mouse and chord keyboard), and the 75-minute mark for the video conferencing and screen sharing/collaboration demo.

This demo, which left the attendees awe-struck, would later be referred to by Silicon Valley dwellers as “the mother of all demos.” In an age when computers were very much still room-sized devices intended for massive computation, NLS suggested that computers, aided by networks, could be used for real-time collaboration between researchers. Looking back, of course, sitting at our computers that are connected to billions of other people via the internet and the World Wide Web, we now know how scarily prescient Engelbart was.

The ARC was funded by DARPA, NASA, and the USAF — and you won’t be surprised, after watching Engelbart’s demo, to hear that the ARC later became one of first nodes of the ARPANET, the precursor of the internet. The first permanent ARPANET link was between the Interface Message Processor (one of the first packet-switched routers) at UCLA and the IMP at SRI. ARC, still headed by Engelbart, then became the first Network Information Center (NIC). (See: Changing the world: DARPA’s top inventions.)

Soon after the excitement of the NLS and ARPANET, however, Engelbart slipped into relative obscurity. Engelbart still firmly believed that networked collaboration was the future, while the rest of the world, including some of his fellow researchers at the ARC, were quickly shifting their towards personal computing. The ARC was eventually sold off a company called Tymshare, which was then acquired by McDonnell Douglas, and with each successive sale Engelbart’s influence waned. Disillusioned, Engelbart eventually retired from McDonnell Douglas in 1986, his vision of a networked intellectual space squeezed out by operational concerns and a lust for larger profits.

Sitting here in 2013, of course, we know that Engelbart’s epiphany wasn’t in vane. Thanks to the World Wide Web, invented in 1993 by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, and continuing efforts in the realms of networking and interfaces, we finally have a network of computers and information that augments human intelligence beyond our wildest imaginations.

View the original article here

Maplesoft and VI-class combine to bring modern simulation methods of vehicle design

MapleSim connector for VI-CarRealTime enables engineers to enable high-fidelity, multi-domain MapleSim models created in the environment of real-time simulation VI-CarRealTime vehicle.

MapleSim, adept scientific (Letchworth, Herts), is based on Modelica physical modeling and simulation tool that uses modern methods to dramatically reduce development time and analysis model in the production of fast, high fidelity. VI-CarRealTime provides fully validated real-time vehicle simulation environment of automotive engineers that can be used to optimize vehicle design and performance monitoring system. By using the VI-CarRealTime vehicle dynamics engineers can also do great design of experiments (DOE) and multipurpose optimization research quick and easy.

"VI-class customers can now use the intuitive physical modeling environment for creating high-fidelity MapleSim vehicle models of subsystems in a fraction of the time it will take them to other tools," said Jürgen Fett, Managing Director, VI-class. "Then, they get automatically generated real-time subsystem code, that they can include in the VI-CarRealTime full vehicle model, replacing their own default subsystem. Not only does this avoid long and hand-coding errors, but allowing them to MapleSim extremely detailed models while maintaining real-time simulation speed. As a result of the simulation results closer to reality, which eventually leads to shorter development cycles, and better products. "

"The combination of MapleSim, VI-CarRealTime and connector allows for fast, precise modeling of automobile subsystems, such as powertrains and transmissions," said Paul Goossens, Vice President of applications engineering at Maplesoft. «Automotive engineers can easily make innovation work, examine their projects in new and better ways to identify problems earlier in the design cycle and the development of high quality, practical solutions to their problems. "

MapleSim connector for VI-CarRealTime is the latest in a growing collection of connector tools and products to MapleSim that include connectors for Simulink dSPACE ™, LabVIEW ™, ® systems, the C code generation and much more.

About Maplesoft

Maplesoft has over 20 years of experience developing products for technical education and research by offering a solution that is applied to every aspect of academic life. Its suite of products reflect the philosophy that given great tools, people can do big things.

Maplesoft's core technology is the world's most advanced symbolic computation engine, which is the basis for all its products, including maple ™, technical computing and documentation of the environment; MapleSim ™, high performance multi-domain modeling and simulation tool for physical systems; and Maple t.a., a Web-based system for creating and evaluating online tests and assignments.

About VI-class

VI-grade GmbH is a leading provider of best-in-class software products and services for complex applications in the field of system level simulation. VI-grade, founded in the year 2005, delivers innovative solutions to optimize the development process from concept to sign off in the transport industry, primarily automotive, aerospace, motorcycle, Motorsports and railways.

About adept scientific plc

Adept Scientific is one of the world's leading suppliers of software and hardware products for research, scientific, engineering and technical applications for desktop computers and has offices in Britain, Germany and the Nordic region. Full details and contact information for all adept scientific international offices are available at www.adeptscience.com; or call + 44 (0) 1462 480055.

View the original article here