NEWS
Wind River Donates VxWorks Platform to FIRST Robotics Student Competition Inspiring Future Engineers
“We are thrilled with Wind River’s VxWorks donation to the robotics competition,” commented Bill Miller, director, FIRST Robotics Competition. “Providing high school students with the opportunity to tackle real-world issues in robotic design is critical to our mission of helping inspire the next generation of innovators and engineers.”
Longtime industrial customer and collaborator National Instruments chose VxWorks as the provider of the C programming software that can be used to program the National Instruments CompactRIO control and data acquisition system adopted by the FIRST Robotics Competition. Wind River’s software was selected based on its ability to improve and accelerate the development of software on industrial applications, as well as to provide students with a real-world development environment. All 1,680 registered robots include Wind River’s VxWorks platform on the CompactRIO.
“We have been impressed by the robust platform that Wind River offers and its ability to help speed time-to-development and reduce cost for the FIRST teams who program CompactRIO using the C programming software,” said Joel Sumner, senior software group manager at National Instruments. “It seemed only natural that we collaborate with them on the solution that we provided to FIRST.”
The FIRST Robotics Competition challenges teams of high school students and their mentors to build robots in a six-week timeframe using a standard set of software and parts. By using the VxWorks platform, students gain the same advantages as Wind River’s industrial customers including decreased development time, debugging/tuning capabilities and a proven, robust real-time operating system rich in supportive middleware components.
“Through this donation, Wind River joins FIRST in its mission to inspire young people to become science and technology leaders,” said Warren Kurisu, senior director of product management, VxWorks Product Division, Wind River. “This continues our commitment at Wind River to helping educate and spark the inventiveness of a new generation of scientists.”
The FIRST Robotics Competition Championship is the culmination of the students’ 2009 season and takes place on April 16—18, 2009 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. Students garner valuable hands-on learning in science, technology, engineering and math. More information can be found at http://www.usfirst.org/. For more information on Wind River’s industrial software portfolio, please visit: http://www.windriver.com/solutions/industries/industrial.
About Wind River
Wind River is the global leader in Device Software Optimization (DSO). Wind River enables companies to develop, run and manage device software faster, better, at lower cost and more reliably. Wind River platforms are pre-integrated, fully standardized, enterprise-wide development solutions. They reduce effort, cost and risk and optimize quality and reliability at all phases of the device software development process, from concept to deployed product.
Founded in 1981, Wind River is headquartered in Alameda, Calif., with operations worldwide. To learn more, visit Wind River at www.windriver.com.
CompactRIO and National Instruments are trademarks of National Instruments.
Contact Information
Jessica Miller
Global Corporate Communications