The NASA IV&V Facility has been engaged in research collaboration with a Portugal based company, Critical Software, and the University of Coimbra to perform robustness testing of a type of COTS software known as Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS).
Research to date has included the robustness testing of the Real-Time Executive for Multiprocessor Systems (RTEMS) operating system. RTEMS is an open source real-time operating system commonly used in embedded systems and found on several NASA missions. Preliminary results have identified a number of RTEMS directives that may be candidates for concern when used on mission critical systems. It is important to note that these functions do not always fail under execution, only in the presence of certain input parameters. Results such as these provide the IV&V Facility with a means for assuring that NASA flight software using COTS components, such as RTEMS, does not execute in a fashion that could result in a failure in the operating system.
This research endeavor has resulted in a capability that the IV&V Facility did not previously possess. Presently this new capability is being made available to three different NASA projects thus providing IV&V analysts with more information to support their efforts. Future work will target the VxWorks real-time operating system.
This research is being conducted on-site at the WVU/NASA Applied Technologies Lab and the NASA IV&V Facility in Fairmont, WV. Students interested in participating in this research should contact Wes Deadrick.
No comments:
Post a Comment