October 2008:

Triakis to Present Findings of NASA-Sponsored Research to Johns Hopkins APL Flight Software Workshop

Triakis has accepted an invitation to present the findings of its NASA-funded research project entitled "Empirical Assurance of Embedded Software Using Realistic Simulated Failure Modes."  For this research we created a Virtual System Integration Laboratory (VSIL) simulator of the Johnson Space Center developed Mini-AERCam to run the executable flight software and conduct an empirical assessment of the system and software behavior in response to a range of enhanced system and component failure conditions as guided by NASA's failure modes & effects analysis (FMEA).  Our research showed that testing in this manner can lead to improved understanding of the effects of failure modes beyond what analysis revealed, and consequently suggesting failure mitigation strategies that might safely return the spacecraft for investigation/repair rather than abandonment/destruction. 

For further details, please see our Mini-AERCam project page on the subject and read our final research report by following the link provided on that page. This is the second year that Triakis will have presented the results of research it has performed under a NASA grant, to the Flight Software Workshop jointly sponsored by the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the Baltimore Chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.  Last year Triakis presented the results of its first NASA funded research project using executable specifications in a Triakis VSIL showing how the same tests can be used to verify both the system requirement before software development, and the software that subsequently implements that requirement.  This method provides positive proof that the software has correctly implemented the requirement as it was tested.  It also saves time by verifying requirements before the software is developed, and eliminating duplicity of tests at the system and software levels.  Please see our Shuttle RMS project page for more details on this ground-breaking work.