Embedded Real-Time Software

From its origins in spaceflight and strategic guidance systems, Draper’s real-time, embedded software expertise has been expanded successfully to onboard systems for a wide variety of air (A-10 Control Display Unit/Embedded GPS/INS), sea (Advanced SEAL Delivery System), land (Distributed Robotics System), and space (Space Shuttle) vehicles.


Draper has branched out from our traditional guidance, navigation, and control area to develop real-time, embedded software for signal processing and communications systems, as well as for distributed mission planning decision and control systems and networked sensors.

Our expertise has been applied to the requirements definition, design, coding, and test and operational support phases of a system’s life cycle. High reliability, ease of maintainability, and low life cycle cost are attributes of Draper-developed embedded software. Our capability has evolved with computer languages and operating systems and with the attendant improvements in throughput and memory, as well as the use of commercial off-the-shelf hardware and software in demonstration or fielded systems. Draper continues to incorporate technological advances, such as reconfigurable computing, to better meet customers’ needs.

A key element of Draper’s expertise is development and implementation of the software architecture: selection and interconnection of processors, allocation of system requirements to hardware and software, and upper-level software design that optimally utilizes computation resources for a given application.

Another significant factor is our extensive use of simulation during system design and development. Typically, an all-software simulation is used in the initial stages of software development, followed by integration of both hardware and software in a hardware-in-the-loop simulation before final integration and test and delivery. Draper is a Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Capability Maturity Model Level 3 certified organization, and SEI procedures and practices are basic to Draper’s development of quality software.

High reliability and fault tolerance are central requirements for many of our manned space, undersea, and aircraft systems. Underpinning Draper’s approach is a mathematically rigorous design methodology that protects against all single-point failures. Software, for our fault-tolerant architectures, manages hardware redundancy in a way that is transparent to the application developers.

We have pioneered development of software error detection and reconfiguration techniques, multiversion programming, automated software generation, and formal methods to mitigate effects of common-mode failures. Fault tolerance also has been applied to sensors, actuators, and communication networks that provide the fault-tolerant computer with input and output.

Draper has special experience in “sequencing systems”, embodied in our patented software product, Timeliner. The Timeliner system consists of a specialized, English-like computer language designed for writing scripts that provide automated sequencing and process control of complex systems, and an execution environment that provides realtime monitoring and control. The Timeliner language allows actions to be performed based on time or other general conditions such as system events or dynamic conditions, and it supports parallel execution and independent control of multiple strings of sequencing logic. The architecture of the Timeliner execution environment can be adapted easily and interfaced to any target system. Timeliner is in use aboard the International Space Station and is being applied to the development of an autonomous satellite servicing system.

Facilities

• Modeling and Simulation Laboratory
• Timeliner Laboratory
• C⁴I Laboratory
• Fault-tolerant Systems Laboratory
• Global Positioning System (GPS) Integration Laboratory

Applications

• Advanced SEAL Delivery System
• Trident II (D5) missile guidance system
• Low-cost Guidance Electronics Unit
• Distributed robotics
• International Space Station
• Integrated Global Positioning System/inertial navigation system
• Autonomous air, land, sea, and space systems

Technologies / Capabilities

• Software architecture development and implementation
• Requirements definition, design, coding, test, operational support
• Highly reliable, easily maintainable, COTS-based systems
• Fault-tolerant systems
• Sequencing systems
• Real-time planning
• Software Engineering Institute CMM Level 3