Project Description

GATE is a premier software and hardware development tool that has been used successfully for over 10 years to support integration, formal testing, and regression testing.

All of the source code, documentation, and test results were developed completely in-house.

Designed and developed based on Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) aircraft software standards (DO-178B), GATE is a complete test environment that is fully qualified and supports documentation required by DO-178B.

The project was a DO-178B Level C program that was completed on time and on budget. During the course of development and integration, RJK Technologies was audited for its processes and product by the FAA for flight worthiness and passed the evaluation the first time. Brett played an instrumental part by interacting with the auditor and walking through all the RJK processes and procedures.

Feature Summary

  • Runs under Win XP, Win 7, and Win 8 (32 and 64bit) environments. Can be run on a desktop, laptop, or tablet.
  • Powerful scripting language allows for complete control including:
    • IF THEN ELSE conditions
    • LOOPING
    • SUBROUTINES
  • Modular, plug in I/O modules
    • Allows new I/O interfaces to be added quickly
    • All data completely defined using XML
    • Allows scripts to be generalized, not depending upon the I/O interface
  • Reporting
    • See real time results and statistics
    • Complete reports to be used in formal test reports

Credentials

These hardware/software programs used GATE to qualify products for flight:

  • X-31 : Used to integrate, formally qualify, and regression test entire digital fly-by-wire flight control software.
  • Global Hawk : Used to formally qualify electric brake actuation system.
  • C-130J Digital Map Unit : Used to integrate, formally qualify, and regression test digital map software currently flying on C-130J

Brief History of GATE

GATE was originally developed for the X-31 program in 2001. Being an experimental development program, the US Navy needed the ability to generate software changes and receive flight clearances as quickly as possible to save on time and cost. Before GATE, the formal testing process took over 4 days, running 24 hours a day. Using GATE, the amount of scripts doubled and the complete test was done in under 8 hours.