Experts at the NASA Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla., needed an object-oriented development tool for the redesign of the Space Shuttle Checkout and Launch Control System (CLCS).
ControlShell from Real Time Innovations (RTI) in Sunnyvale, Calif., met their needs.
"ControlShell`s support of an object-oriented design paradigm fits with the CLCS application team`s concept of how to maximize reuse and reduce maintenance," says Ben Bryant, CLCS application software division chief at Kennedy Space Center. "ControlShell provides a graphical method to capture data acquisition and operational control that increases productivity and will enable us to meet our ambitious schedule."
ControlShell enables RTI engineers "to understand the application, through graphical representation, without having to know the underlying language [C++] and provides visibility into the state of their application in the real-time operational environment, " Bryant says.
The RTI tool helps users create electromechanical system designs from the "top-down" by visually decomposing problems into interacting objects. It also enables designers to build their systems from the "bottom-up" by graphically combining components from a repository of reusable software.
ControlShell combines event-driven logic, sampled-data feedback control, and signal processing. While it enables engineers to build from pre-existing components without coding, it still supports custom software development.
ControlShell runs on Sun, Silicon Graphics, and other Windows NT hosts. Real-time target applications will run on the Wind River Systems VxWorks and Silicon Graphics React. - J.M.
For more information, contact Real-Time Innovations Inc. by phone at 408-720-8312, by fax at 408-734-5009, by mail at 155A Moffett Park Drive, Suite 111, Sunnyvale, Calif., 94089, or on the World Wide Web at http://www.rti.com.
