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MHI Aerospace Systems Corp. Selects AdaCore's QGen for Model-Based Development
[May 24, 2017]

MHI Aerospace Systems Corp. Selects AdaCore's QGen for Model-Based Development


Automotive Engineering Exposition--AdaCore today announced that MHI Aerospace Systems Corporation (MASC), a member of the Mitsubishi (News - Alert) Heavy Industries Group, has selected the QGen toolset to develop the software for the Throttle Quadrant Assembly (TQA) system. This avionics research project is being conducted to meet the Level C objectives in the DO-178C safety standard for airborne software and its DO-331 supplement on Model-Based Development and Verification. The use of a qualified code generator can help save significant effort in developing and verifying the software, and the future availability of qualification material from AdaCore factored strongly in MASC's decision to choose QGen. The QGen code generator can be qualified at the highest Tool Qualification Level, TQL-1 (equivalent to a development tool in DO-178B).

"The QGen product is specifically targeted to model-based development in safety-critical control systems," said Juan-Carlos Bernedo, QGen Product Manager at AdaCore. "However, model-based development raises some important questions: how to verify the model's safety properties, such as freedom from run-time errors, and how to know that the properties are preserved in the generated code. QGen and its supporting TQL-1 qualification material help to answer these questions, and we're pleased that MASC's Throttle Quadrant Assembly project will be taking advantage of these benefits."

"We chose QGen as our Auto Code Generator because we believe TQL-1 qualification will reduce the effort of our verification activities that comply with DO-331," said Hiroyuki Kakamu, General Manager of MASC. "As part of the QA project, we discussed DO-331 compliance with AdaCore's engineers. Based on these discussions, we developed a Model-Based Design process that complies with DO-331 based on the use of QGen."



QGen's qualifiable and customizable code generator processes a safe subset of Simulink® and Stateflow® models and generates optimized source code in the safety-oriented programming languages SPARK (a formally analyzable Ada subset) and MISRA C. QGen incorporates static model verification, processor-in-the-loop (PIL) testing on a real target or through emulation on the host robust, and powerful model-level debugging support for back-to-back testing between simulation and target execution.

About the Throttle Quadrant Assembly project


TQA is a product of Tamagawa Seiki Co., Ltd., for light airplanes. Tamagawa Seiki Co., Ltd., is a Japanese manufacturer that develops a variety of products for the airplane and automotive markets. In 2014 they and MASC developed the TQA product controlled by software that was written manually, not using MBD. In 2016 they initiated a research project to redevelop the TQA using MBD technologies, and they verified that it had good enough functionality and performance as compared with the original TQA.

About AdaCore

Founded in 1994, AdaCore supplies software development and verification tools for mission-critical, safety-critical and security-critical systems. Four flagship products highlight the company's offerings:

  • The GNAT Pro development environment for Ada, a complete toolset for designing, implementing, and managing applications that demand high reliability and maintainability,
  • The CodePeer advanced static analysis tool, an automatic Ada code reviewer and validator that can detect and eliminate errors both during development and retrospectively on existing software,
  • The SPARK Pro verification environment, a toolset based on formal methods and oriented toward high-assurance systems, and
  • The QGen model-based development tool suite for safety-critical control systems, providing a qualifiable and customizable code generator, a static verifier for Simulink® and Stateflow® models, and a model-level debugger.

Over the years customers have used AdaCore products to field and maintain a wide range of critical applications in domains such as commercial avionics, automotive, railway, space, military systems, air traffic management/control, medical devices and financial services. AdaCore has an extensive and growing worldwide customer base; see www.adacore.com/customers/ for further information.

AdaCore products are open source and come with expert online support provided by the developers themselves. The company has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris. www.adacore.com

About MHI Aerospace Systems Corporation

Founded in 1986, MHI Aerospace Systems Corp. is a member of the MHI Group dedicated to custom computer programming services for the aerospace industry. It is located in Nagoya, Japan. Lately MASC has been conducting various activities related to DO-178C certification such as researching the standards, discussing with DERs, consulting to Japan's equipment manufacturers, etc. Now MASC is a leading company for DO-178C technologies in Japan.


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