These enhancements bring Emerson's AI-enabled testing capabilities to a wider range of engineers worldwide, accelerating development without sacrificing the rigor, oversight, and validation essential in modern test and measurement environments.
As engineering systems become increasingly software-defined and interconnected, test engineers face growing pressure to manage increasingly complex development and validation workflows without compromising quality or increasing development time. Unlike general-purpose AI tools, NI Nigel AI is designed by Emerson specifically for test engineering environments, providing contextual assistance that understands engineering code and workflows, existing test systems, and application data.
Integrated into NI software, Nigel AI helps engineers accelerate tasks such as code generation, debugging, sequence development, and systems understanding. With Emerson’s latest advancements, Nigel AI goes beyond assisted guidance to incorporate AI-assisted authoring capabilities, including instruction-based code generation in NI LabVIEW™ and automatic sequence generation in NI TestStand™. This functionality allows engineers to move more quickly from the design to the validation phase, while maintaining control over the review, validation, and deployment of their work.
At NI Connect 2026, Emerson engineers unequivocally demonstrated the practical impact of Nigel AI, reducing a task that previously required approximately 20 hours of work spread over two weeks using conventional AI coding tools to a workflow that was completed in about 20 minutes, achieving functional results on the first try.
Andy Weatherill, Farnell's global director of product and technology, clearly states: "AI has enormous potential to improve engineering productivity, but its true value becomes apparent when it fits naturally into the way engineers work. By making Emerson's NI Nigel AI available to customers through Farnell, we are helping them adopt AI specifically designed to complement engineers' expertise, accelerate development, and support the high standards of quality and validation demanded by modern testing environments."
Siddarth Sethi, vice president and general manager of NI Test & Measurement software and analytics at Emerson, adds:“The future of AI in engineering isn’t about replacing engineers, but about enhancing how they work. Nigel brings AI directly into the systems, workflows, and data that engineers rely on every day, combining speed and rigor and helping teams confidently solve increasingly complex challenges.”
Built on NI’s AI-ready platform, Nigel AI connects engineering hardware, software, data, and workflows to provide intelligent assistance throughout the entire test lifecycle. Rather than operating as a standalone AI tool, it integrates into existing engineering environments and supports development, validation, troubleshooting, and deployment tasks, while helping to reduce repetitive work and streamline complex workflows.
