Finmeccanica is one of the Italy's major high tech companies, active in the design and manufacturing of commuter, defence and civil aircraft, helicopters, satellites, radars, air traffic management and control, missile systems, power stations, trains and automation systems for services. It operates worldwide with more than 50,000 people and invests 12% of its revenues in R&D.
Through Alenia Aerospace, Finmeccanica is among Europe's leading producers of aircraft and space systems.
Alenia Aeronautics designs and manufactures civil and military aircraft primarily in collaboration with the major world aircraft manufacturers: the regional transport ATR series, the G222 tactical airlift and its derivative C27J, the FLA/AM400 transport plane, the Tornado multi-role combat aircraft, the AMX close support aircraft and the Eurofighter 2000, air superiority aircraft.
In addition, significant collaborations as structural major components supplier are developed with Airbus (for A321), with Dassault (for Falcon 2000) and with Boeing (for MD11, MD80/90, B767, B717).
In all programs the safety process takes an important role in ensuring the safe operation of the systems. All failure conditions have to be identified and all associated hazards have to be properly addressed.
Considering the increasing complexity and integration of the systems, the current Alenia effort goes in the direction of improving the safety practice for complex systems development with the final goals to enhance the safety and the quality of the product.
In the proposed project Alenia will make use of its experience in the reliability and safety analysis processes and certification process, of the knowledge of SW and electronic tools for reliability and safety applications, together with the experience in developing new methods for reliability and safety, to contribute to establish the new methodology for the Complex Systems.
In the project Alenia will have both the management and technical leaderships.
Alenia will address the exploitation of the project results mainly to the related internal targets (civil and military aircraft). Alenia intend dedicate its effort also to the dissemination of the results through the participation to safety events (workshops, conferences).
Airbus France today unites the competencies of 13100 professionals dedicated to the Airbus activity. With four industrial sites, Airbus France covers all the aircraft manufacturing specialities, from design through to product support, via development, production and marketing:
Within the framework of the Airbus Industrie consortium, Airbus France and its European partners commercialise and support a family of aircraft with over 100 seats, covering all the market segments.
The Airbus range comprises:
Airbus France and its partners are currently studying the development of several types of civil and military transport aircraft: the Airbus A318 (smaller version of the A319); the Airbus A380 (four-engine very long range transport); the Airbus A400M (future European military transport aircraft); the MRTT (the Airbus military logistic transport); the European Supersonic Research Program- PERS - and a flying wing capable of transporting 1000 passengers.
Main figures:
In the ESACS project, Airbus France will contribute with experience in safety analysis methods and it will promote the developed methodology among its industrial partners.
BAES is a global corporation employing more than 85000 people in Europe and has an annual turnover of more than 20 billion. BAES' business interests include Commercial and Military aircraft, Defence Systems, Naval vessels, Space, Ordinance and Electronics. BAES involvement in commercial aircraft extends from the large Airbus transports, through regional transports, to commuter aircraft.
BAES is a major partner in the leading European consortium Airbus Industrie. Airbus Industrie brings together Europe's four leading aerospace companies (UK's BAES, France's Aerospatiale, Germany's Daimler-Benz Aerospace and Spain's CASA) in a European partnership that has become one of the world's top two suppliers of large civil aircraft. BAES has a 20 per cent shareholding and responsibility for the design, development and production of the high technology, fuel-efficient wings for the complete range of Airbus aircraft.
BAES' transport aircraft research interests cover both product and process development and are aimed at enhancing its world class competitive position in wing supply.
In addition to the supply of wings, BAES has design and maintenance responsibility for the fuel systems and landing gear of the Airbus family.
BAES is strongly committed to partnerships, strengthening the European aerospace industry, and applying the best of Europe's know-how, technology and engineering, manufacturing and marketing skills to a range of aerospace projects. It is company policy to promote R&D across a wide range of disciplines and to take all possible steps to ensure the successful commercial application of results
Airbus UK will exploit the results of ESACS on new projects, e.g. A380, and also existing projects where any significant modifications allow application of an integrated safety process.
Airbus Germany, the civil aircraft business unit of DaimlerChrysler AG, is one of the major aerospace companies in Europe. It has a 37,9% share in Airbus Industry. The company is engaged in the development and manufacturing of advanced high performance commercial transport aircraft and is recognized for its technological expertise in nearly all fields of aeronautical engineering.
RTD capabilities of Airbus Germany cover all aspects of aircraft design, airframe and systems development, engine integration and aircraft certification including safety assessment.
The safety and reliability department of Airbus Germany is responsible for safety and reliability analysis of all aircraft systems and all system installations/integrations developed under Airbus Germany responsibility. The safety and reliability department is together with the Airbus Industrie partners responsible for the development of processes, methods, guidelines and tools in the field of safety and reliability.
In the ESACS project, Airbus Germany will contribute with experience in system simulation, safety analysis methods and with the application of advanced methods in practical industrial work.
SAAB is a growth oriented and innovative knowledge based company mainly active in the aerospace and defense fields, offering advanced systems, products and services based on sophisticated systems technology developed for the world market.
SAAB possesses a large number of competencies - from astrophysics, aerodynamics and structural mechanics to sensor and laser technology and software. Even for a high-tech company, this represents a unique range.
As a prominent defense contractor, SAAB is a leader in electronics and software, and also utilizes generalized competencies in the military market. SAAB's major strength is systems integration - the ability to assume responsibility for and implement large-scale projects in which a number of complex systems have to work together. In addition to the many competencies that are needed to develop modern fighter aircraft, it is this systems integration capability that has made it possible to build the world's first fourth-generation fighter - Gripen. Systems integration will further increase in importance as defense systems become more network-based.
SAAB has the comprehensive knowledge and ability needed to efficiently design and manufacture aerospace products including major airframe structures and subsystems for commercial aircraft such as Airbus and Boeing. In addition to this SAAB has a number of key competencies including information gathering, data fusion, technology for man/machine interface, decision support and communication.
SAAB also has the extensive experience collaborating with others and is a respected partner. The ability to undertake constructive collaborations gives the company a competitive edge in a market and an industry where various forms of partnership are common at each stage, from development and manufacturing to marketing and sales.
The company SAAB is active in the following business areas: Aerospace, Dynamics (missiles), Infomatics (control and information systems), Space, Aviation Services (commercial aircraft maintenance incl. engines) and Technical support and services.
SAAB has a total of 17 000 employees. In 1999 sales amounted to 17 600 MSEK. The R&D share is 25 percent of sales.
SAAB Aerospace will contribute to the project ESACS with experience in integrating design tools in the development process and in the application of new advances in methods in industrial work. Exploitation at SAAB will be rapid. The project work is closely linked to ongoing system safety activities and to technology development.
SIA is a system and a software engineering company founded in Torino (Italy) in 1969, specialised in design and development of electronic systems for aerospace on-board and ground applications, both in the civil and military field.
SIA was, and still is, involved in the development of systems in several projects of great importance at national and international level. Among them: Tornado, Eurofighter-2000, Harrier AV8-B, C27-J, Tethered, MPLM, IRIS, SAX, International Space Station (ISS).
SIA Quality System has been certified as compliant to ISO 9001 by UNAVIA (Certificate n. 012.01 of 30/04/1998) as well as it is compliant to the requirements of NATO AQAP-150.
In the field of aerospace and defence projects, SIA provides support in a wide variety of activities dealing with safety. Among them:
Safety Planning, that is the definition of detailed tasks and schedule of system safety management and system safety engineering required to identify, evaluate, and eliminate or control hazards throughout the system life cycle.
Safety Analysis and Risk Control including hazard identification and analysis as a preliminary activity to find solutions to improve hazard mitigation.
Hazard Logging, that is the activity related to the Hazard Log Database, containing all project safety-related information.
Safety Requirements Definition, Traceability, V&V, that is the definition and allocation of safety requirements throughout the requirement specification documents, the verification of their traceability and implementation down to the last phases of the life cycle and the final validation of the affected systems/components
Safety Aspects in Product Manuals that relates to a number of safety provisions, such as definition of safety procedures (including training), maintenance of safety devices, identification of forbidden operations.
The applied Safety Analysis Techniques are based on a number of different methodologies/techniques such as:
In the proposed project, SIA will have the role of associated partner of Alenia Aerospace to give his contribution:
The Institute for Scientific and Technological Research (IRST) was founded in 1976 as part of ITC (Istituto Trentino di Cultura), an organization supported by the Autonomous Province of Trento with the participation of other public and private institutions. ITC-IRST is active in several areas of Advanced Computer Science and Engineering, carrying out basic and applied research activities, and technology transfer projects.
Activities in formal methods are carried out at ITC-IRST by the Automated Reasoning Systems division (SRA). Currently SRA consists of 13 full-time researchers, five programmers, various post-doctorate, doctorate and laureate students. The group all together contains between 25 and 30 people. SRA is committed to both top quality scientific research and technology transfer to private industry and public organizations. The main source of funding of the division are contracts with private companies (e.g. in the railway sector, in the appliance and air conditioning sector). More limited funding comes from European and National research projects (e.g. the European Fifth Framework and the Italian Space Agency).
The members of SRA have been actively working in the field of formal verification since 1990, in the development of techniques and tools for automated deduction and model checking. In col-laboration with Carnegie Mellon University (Prof. E. Clarke), they have developed NuSMV, an open architecture for symbolic model checking. NuSMV has been designed to be reliably used for the verification of industrial designs, as a core for custom verification tools, as a test-bed for formal verification techniques, and to be applicable to other research areas. NuSMV is publicly available at http://sra.itc.it/tools/nusmv/index.html, and has been installed in over eighty institutions worldwide. The members of SRA have been also active in the development of formal verification techniques, e.g. Bounded Model Checking, based on decision procedures for propositional satisfiability.
One of the main objectives of SRA is technology transfer of research results within industrial projects, where a solid experience has been built during many years of activity. Technology transfer is achieved through contracts with industry, mainly private companies. Formal verification techniques and tools have been and are applied in various technology transfer projects, mainly for the design, development and verification/validation of embedded, safety critical applications, such as micro-control systems for complex plants, communication protocols, safety-critical software in different transportation fields (e.g. on-board train protection systems). The activity in technology transfer includes the integration of formal and informal specification methods, the development of application-specific verification techniques, and the desing of support tools based on formal techniques for the development of safety critical systems.
The SRA division has collaborated and collaborates with various Departments of European and international Universities, among which the Department of Computer and Management Sciences of the University of Trento, the Mechanized Reasoning Group of the University of Genova, the the D.R.E.A.M. Group of the University of Edinburgh, the Computer Science Department of Carnegie Mellon University, and the Formal Reasoning Group of Stanford University.
In the ESACS project, ITC-IRST will contribute with its experiences in the use of formal methods for system design, with particular respect to the use and integration of formal notations inside company's development process. Moreover, ITC-IRST will contribute with its in depth knowledge of tools and techniques for formal verification.
A public, scientific and technical establishment with both industrial and commercial responsibilities, ONERA reports to the French Ministry of Defence and enjoys financial independence. It operates more than 1700 people. ONERA conducts research in the disciplines and techniques involved in design of an aircraft or spacecraft: aerodynamics, flight dynamics, energetics, structural strength, materials, optics and laser, acoustics, radar and electromagnetism, electronics, embedded systems, robotics, information processing.
Researchers involved in the ESACS project are based at ONERA Toulouse center located on SUPAERO Aerospace Technical University campus. ONERA Toulouse center and SUPAERO activities are closely linked as professors participate to ONERA research projects and ONERA engineers lecture at SUPAERO. These researchers belong to the control theory and computer science departments at ONERA: DCSD and DTIM. These departments are members of FERIA a joint computer science research laboratory with University Paul Sabatier laboratory IRIT and LAAS.
Both DCSD and DTIM departments work on methods, techniques and tools for assisting in the definition and verification/validation of critical embedded systems. They are currently developing models and using verification tools in the context of the PRISME project. Other studies deal with the development of models and algorithms for detection and diagnosis.
In the ESACS project, DCSD and DTIM will contribute to the definition of a methodology for safety modelling and analyses by investigating the use of formal techniques. They have strong experience in system modelling, safety modelling and analysis, simulation, model checking, formal verification of properties, detection and diagnosis. They also have solid background on real avionics due to a strong cooperation with EADS Airbus SA since many years.
ONERA team will collaborate with the team "Modeling, verifying and testing computerized system" (MVTCS) of LaBRI. This team centers its research on engineering complex and critical systems. These systems are studied in functional and dysfunctional modes by considering faulty behavior. The objective is to formally model the systems, carry out calculations on the models (property verifications, simulations, qualitative and quantitative evaluation, generation of test sequences, etc. ) and exploit the results of these 'calculations', in particular in order to validate the model and specifications. The Altarica project gathers the works dedicated to the language and tools for the safety analysis.
Researchers of (MVTCS) have served in several national and international committees relevant to the scope of the project.
OFFIS is a state-funded R&D Institute associated with the Department of Computer Science of the University of Oldenburg, FRG, with a scientific staff of more than 70 graduate or post-graduate computer scientists, and a total budget of about 6 Mill Euro, out of which more than 60% stemming from industrial projects. The R&D Division of Embedded Systems co-operating in this project has its focus in the application areas of automotive, avionics, and telecommunication, thus providing an excellent match for the markets addressed in the project. It is co-operating with leading car- and supplier companies (BMW, DaimlerChrysler, GM, Peugeot Citroën, MECEL), leading avionics companies (British Aerospace, EADS Airbus GmbH, Snecma, Aeorospatiale, Israeli Aircraft Industries), and leading telecommunication companies (DeutscheTelekom, France Telecom, Italtel, Siemens ICN, Philips, Telefonica). The focus of its R&D activities is on enhancing industry standard modelling tools, in particular on optimising their specification capabilities for real-time and safety-related applications, as well as providing advanced validation technology, such as formal verification and automatic test generation modules. Another topic deals with methods to support the design process using intelligent knowledge bases. OFFIS has developed environments for modelling expert knowledge in engineering diciplines. Furthermore, the division is providing consultancy services in process optimisations. OFFIS also closely co-operates with tool vendors active in the above application domains, such as I-Logix and Verilog. OFFIS has developed a powerful verification environment for the STATEMATE system and demonstrated its applicability in industrial design environments by several industrial case studies. The STATEMATE verification environment has been introduced to the market by I-Logix.
The OFFIS R&D Division of Embedded Systems has successfully participated in several industrial projects funded by the European commission (FORMAT, FORSITE, V-FORMAT, SACRES, REQUEST, PEOPLE, SQUASH) as well as in national industrial projects funded by the BMBF (KORSO, KORSYS) and is currently involved in several IST-projects of the Fifth Framework (SafeAir, AIT-WOODDES, VIP, ODETTE). Out of these mentioned projects SACRES and SafeAir addressing design of safety-critical embedded systems are most closely related to the subject area of ESACS. OFFIS has recently founded a commercial spin-off OSC (OFFIS Systems- and Consulting GmbH) providing marketing channels for OFFIS R&D prototypes, and offering industrial consultancy services, demonstrating the commitment of OFFIS for exploitation of R&D project results.
Founded in 1989 by Gunnar Stalmarck and Marten Saflund, the business mission was to develop state-of-the-art, leading edge systems for automated verification of both software and hardware design based on formal methods. Ten years ago, the area was still in the early research phase, with the first real-life practical applications coming in the mid-90s.
The method was based on a worldwide patent developed by Professor Stalmarck, and was jointly owned by Ericsson. The method was first implemented industrially at Adtranz Signal (former owned by Ericson) in 1989 to solve a problem of in-determinism in signal interlocking systems.
For over a decade, Prover Technology has been developing and fine-tuning the technology, serving global Blue-chip clients such as Volvo, Ericsson, Aerospatial, ENEL and some of the leading semiconductor industries into fully automated verification solutions.
With the release of Prover Plugin, the technology has now reached a new level of maturity allowing the integration of automated, advanced verification functions in other system development tools. Participation in large international R&D projects and numerous evaluation and implementation projects at clients has assured Prover Technology a position as a leading supplier at the cutting edge of automated verification technology.
Prover Technology, with headquarter in Stockholm and offices in Gothenburg, Umea and Toulouse, has 35 employees and is in the midst of planned rapid growth. In order to meet fast growing demand from USA, an office is scheduled to open in San Francisco during 2000.
Its founders and employees own the company. Investors like MVI (http://www.mvigroup.com) and the Swedish Industrial Development Fund (http://www.industrifonden.se) have secured Prover Technology's continued development of technologies and markets.
Prover will take the role as tool provider and at the same time contributing with expertise in:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|