ALEXANDRIA, VA-National Instruments (Austin, TX), has been allocated a patent (7,992,129), which was formed by four inventors for a "system and method for programmatically generating a graphical program based on a sequence of motion control, machine vision, and data acquisition (DAQ) operations." The inventors are Sundeep Chandhoke, Nicolas Vazquez, David W. Fuller and Christopher Cifra.

The abstract of the patent, which the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released, says: "A user may utilize a prototyping environment to create a sequence of motion control, machine vision, and/or data acquisition (DAQ) operations, e.g., without needing to write or construct code in any programming language. For example, the environment may provide a graphical user interface (GUI) enabling the user to develop/prototype the sequence at a high level, by selecting from and configuring a sequence of operations using the GUI. The prototyping environment application may then be operable to automatically, i.e., programmatically, generate graphical program code implementing the sequence. For example, the environment may generate a standalone graphical program operable to perform the sequence of operations."