Introduction
The Birds Project provides free software intended
to make it easier to develop airborne software and hardware.
Although only
software
tools
are offered at first, eventually it may be possible to provide actual
deployable
free airborne software.
Developing airborne software is much more
expensive
and time-consuming than developing software for our desktop
computers.
This expense has been a particular problem for smaller companies
developing
low-to-medium criticality devices, as opposed to large companies
developing
high-criticality devices.
The issue that makes airborne software so
expensive
is not any direct characteristic of the software as such. Rather,
the expense derives from the requirement that airborne software must be
qualified via what is known as RTCA DO-178B. It is the
certification
effort and the associated activities that are so expensive. By
reducing
the cost of the certification effort, the overall development cost may
be reduced somewhat.
Some of the same comments apply to development
of airborne hardware, particularly those employing complex devices such
as FPGAs or ASICs. The configuration of such devices is very
similar to simple software, and so these devices must be qualified via
RTCA DO-254.
Birds Project Materials
All Birds Project materials are provided free of charge, for use under
an appropriate open-software license. (Wherever possible, the GNU
GPL
or its variants.)
- Introduction to airborne software
development
for complete beginners.
- Introduction to airborne hardware
development for complete beginners.
- Do178Builder -- a software
design
and documentation
tool for Linux and Win32.
- Samples -- sample projects for
demonstrating
the use of Do178Builder.
This page was last modified by Ron Burkey on
2006-07-02.
Contact
the Birds Project.
