The team at the T-Systems International stand (I8, Hall 5B) were so inspired by their first appearance at Le Bourget that at the weekend they came up with a new idea that could contribute to a big reduction in the time taken to develop new aircraft control systems.
The Ottobrunn, Germany-based company, which operated under the Debis banner until its acquisition by Deutsche Telekom two years ago, is here with a range of products centred on control system development.
Functions
Two of them, the Real Time Control System (RTCS) development tool and the AIDASS test suite, started out as separate functions but have now been integrated.
Dr Steve Springett, T-Systems sales and marketing manager for embedded systems, says: "The big advantage of bringing the two together is that the necessary testing procedures are being worked out at the same time as the new control laws themselves, rather than afterwards as happens in more conventional arrangements. That compresses the development process, making it more efficient and therefore quicker and cheaper."
But it was a third product that led to the weekend's big idea. This is the maintenance procedures trainer that the company developed for the Luftwaffe's fleet of C-160 Transall twin-turboprop transports. Complete with a vivid, photo-realistic onscreen depiction of the aircraft's flight-deck instrumentation and a dynamic interactive user interface, it can be viewed and tried out at the stand in Hall 5B.
When they saw the trainer and RTCS/AIDASS side-by-side on the stand, the T-Systems people realised that yet another stage of integration was possible. Tying in the trainer and using it as a development visualisation device would allow cockpit system designers to see directly the effects of control inputs generated by RTCS and permit changes to be made in real time.
This also holds out the possibility that on completion of development the finalised software could simply handed straight on to the operator for maintenance training purposes.
Says Springett: "We think this will allow further compression of development times and as soon as we get back after the show we're going to apply ourselves to making it happen."
Source: Flight Daily News
