Rockwell Collins successfully applies new NASA software verification technology

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (July 19, 2005) - Rockwell Collins has successfully applied advanced software verification technology developed under NASA’s Aviation Safety and Security Program (AvSSP) to key components of the company’s ADGS-2100 Adaptive Display & Guidance System and the FCS-5000 Flight Control System.

The application of this technology has allowed Rockwell Collins to formally prove over 400 key safety properties early in the development life cycle and to find errors much sooner and more efficiently than would be possible with traditional verification techniques.

Rockwell Collins collaborated with the University of Minnesota and NASA to develop the application of this technology.

“This is a perfect example of NASA accelerating the transfer of academic research into industrial use,” said Steven Miller, PhD, Principal Software Engineer in the Advanced Technology Center at Rockwell Collins.

This advance was made possible by integrating formal verification tools with popular commercial modeling tools such as MATLAB Simulink^® software. Highly optimized translators developed by Rockwell Collins and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota transform production models into a variety of formal analysis tools including the popular NuSMV model checker and the SAL verification tools from SRI International.

Several factors were necessary for the successful application of formal verification to Rockwell Collins’ production systems. Key was the development of algorithms within the translators that optimize the generated models for specific analysis tools.  These optimizations reduced the time required for model checking by up to five orders of magnitude.

The basic research underlying the translators was conducted by Professor Mats Heimdahl's Critical Systems Research Group at the University of Minnesota.

"It has been enormously rewarding to see many years of our research have a real impact in practice," said Heimdahl. "Our collaboration with Rockwell Collins has been an excellent combination of academic research, industry research, and highly successful technology transfer. We look forward to maintaining this successful collaboration."

Rockwell Collins hopes to expand the range of models it can formally analyze by extending their existing tool suite.

“Ultimately, we’d like to be able to prove safety properties of an entire avionics system, not just a single complex component. That would let us integrate systems engineering and safety analysis around a common formal model of the system architecture.” said Miller.

Rockwell Collins (NYSE: COL) is a leader in the design, production and support of communications and aviation electronics solutions for government and commercial customers worldwide. Additional company information is available at www.rockwellcollins.com.

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