Software for NAA sample changer control

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dutra Neto, Aimore; Menezes, Maria Angela de B.C.

2015-01-01

In CDTN/CNEN laboratories, the neutron activation analysis (NAA) is an analytical technique routinely employed. The irradiation is performed in the TRIGA MARK I IPR-R1 reactor. After irradiated, the samples depend of an operator to be changed, creating a bottle neck in the process. To optimize the whole process, an automation of the changing samples is necessary. In order to achieve this goal, it was developed a software to control a sample changer under construction at CDTN laboratories. Two programs, running in two different environments, manages the entire acquisition process and performs all activities necessary to move the motors to positioning the samples and control the vacuum to grip the vials. The high level routine communicates with Genie 2000 software to control a Canberra Multiport II, while a low level program controls the physical assemble. (author)

Controlling S2 terminal using FS software

Science.gov (United States)

Xue, Zhuhe

New S2FS software for controlling S2 terminal of Sheshan station has been developed. It works under Field System software. All S2 operation commands are incorporated in a station program. The interface of SWT computer and S2 terminal is RS232 interface. S2FS software is designed by using Shell and C language. It has been used in VSOP experiments.

Quality control of the software in the JT-60 computer control system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Isaji, Nobuaki; Kurihara, Kenichi; Kimura, Toyoaki

1990-07-01

The JT-60 Control System should be improved corresponding to the experimental requirements. In order to keep the integrity of the system even in the modification the concept of quality control (QC) was introduced in the software development. What we have done for QC activity are (1) to establish standard procedures of the software development, (2) to develop support tools for grasping the present status of the program structure, and (3) to develop a document system, and a source program management system. This paper reports these QC activities and their problems for the JT-60 control system. (author)

The software quality control for gamma spectrometry

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Monte, L.

1986-01-01

One of major problems with wich the quality control program of an environmental measurements laboratory is confronted is the evaluation of the performances of software packages for the analysis of gamma-ray spectra. A program of tests for evaluating the performances of the software package (SPECTRAN-F, Canberra Inc.) used by our laboratory is being carried out. In this first paper the results of a preliminary study concerning the evaluation of the performance of the doublet analysis routine are presented

Tank monitor and control system (TMACS) software configuration management plan

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

GLASSCOCK, J.A.

1999-01-01

This Software Configuration Management Plan (SCMP) describes the methodology for control of computer software developed and supported by the Systems Development and Integration (SD and I) organization of Lockheed Martin Services, Inc. (LMSI) for the Tank Monitor and Control System (TMACS). This plan controls changes to the software and configuration files used by TMACS. The controlled software includes the Gensym software package, Gensym knowledge base files developed for TMACS, C-language programs used by TMACS, the operating system on the production machine, language compilers, and all Windows NT commands and functions which affect the operating environment. The configuration files controlled include the files downloaded to the Acromag and Westronic field instruments

Software development on the DIII-D control and data acquisition computers

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Penaflor, B.G.; McHarg, B.B. Jr.; Piglowski, D.

1997-11-01

The various software systems developed for the DIII-D tokamak have played a highly visible and important role in tokamak operations and fusion research. Because of the heavy reliance on in-house developed software encompassing all aspects of operating the tokamak, much attention has been given to the careful design, development and maintenance of these software systems. Software systems responsible for tokamak control and monitoring, neutral beam injection, and data acquisition demand the highest level of reliability during plasma operations. These systems made up of hundreds of programs totaling thousands of lines of code have presented a wide variety of software design and development issues ranging from low level hardware communications, database management, and distributed process control, to man machine interfaces. The focus of this paper will be to describe how software is developed and managed for the DIII-D control and data acquisition computers. It will include an overview and status of software systems implemented for tokamak control, neutral beam control, and data acquisition. The issues and challenges faced developing and managing the large amounts of software in support of the dynamic and everchanging needs of the DIII-D experimental program will be addressed

Ground test accelerator control system software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Burczyk, L.; Dalesio, R.; Dingler, R.; Hill, J.; Howell, J.A.; Kerstiens, D.; King, R.; Kozubal, A.; Little, C.; Martz, V.; Rothrock, R.; Sutton, J.

1988-01-01

This paper reports on the GTA control system that provides an environment in which the automation of a state-of-the-art accelerator can be developed. It makes use of commercially available computers, workstations, computer networks, industrial 110 equipment, and software. This system has built-in supervisory control (like most accelerator control systems), tools to support continuous control (like the process control industry), and sequential control for automatic start-up and fault recovery (like few other accelerator control systems). Several software tools support these levels of control: a real-time operating system (VxWorks) with a real-time kernel (VRTX), a configuration database, a sequencer, and a graphics editor. VxWorks supports multitasking, fast context-switching, and preemptive scheduling. VxWorks/VRTX is a network-based development environment specifically designed to work in partnership with the UNIX operating system. A data base provides the interface to the accelerator components. It consists of a run time library and a database configuration and editing tool. A sequencer initiates and controls the operation of all sequence programs (expressed as state programs). A graphics editor gives the user the ability to create color graphic displays showing the state of the machine in either text or graphics form

A process control software package for the SRS

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Atkins, V.R.; Poole, D.E.; Rawlinson, W.R.

1980-03-01

The development of software to give high level access from application programs for monitoring and control of the Daresbury Synchrotron Radiation Source on a network-wide basis is described. The design and implementation of the control system database, a special supervisor call and and 'executive' type task handling of all process input/output services for the 7/32 (which runs under 05/32-MT), and process control 'device driver' software for the 7/16 (run under L5/16-MT) are included. (UK)

Air Vehicle Technology Integration Program (AVTIP) Delivery Order 0015: Open Control Platform (OCP) Software Enabled Control (SEC) Hardware in the Loop Simulation - OCP Hardware Integration

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Paunicka, James L

2005-01-01

...) project sponsored by the DARPA Software Enabled Control (SEC) Program. The purpose of this project is to develop the capability to be an OCP test-bed and to evaluate the OCP controls and simulation environment for a specific test case...

Tank monitor and control system (TMACS) software configuration management plan; TOPICAL

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

GLASSCOCK, J.A.

1999-01-01

This Software Configuration Management Plan (SCMP) describes the methodology for control of computer software developed and supported by the Systems Development and Integration (SD and I) organization of Lockheed Martin Services, Inc. (LMSI) for the Tank Monitor and Control System (TMACS). This plan controls changes to the software and configuration files used by TMACS. The controlled software includes the Gensym software package, Gensym knowledge base files developed for TMACS, C-language programs used by TMACS, the operating system on the production machine, language compilers, and all Windows NT commands and functions which affect the operating environment. The configuration files controlled include the files downloaded to the Acromag and Westronic field instruments

A flexible software architecture for tokamak discharge control systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ferron, J.R.; Penaflor, B.; Walker, M.L.; Moller, J.; Butner, D.

1995-01-01

The software structure of the plasma control system in use on the DIII-D tokamak experiment is described. This system implements control functions through software executing in real time on one or more digital computers. The software is organized into a hierarchy that allows new control functions needed to support the DIII-D experimental program to be added easily without affecting previously implemented functions. This also allows the software to be portable in order to create control systems for other applications. The tokamak operator uses an X-windows based interface to specify the time evolution of a tokamak discharge. The interface provides a high level view for the operator that reduces the need for detailed knowledge of the control system operation. There is provision for an asynchronous change to an alternate discharge time evolution in response to an event that is detected in real time. Quality control is enhanced through off-line testing that can make use of software-based tokamak simulators

Verification and validation of control system software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Munro, J.K. Jr.; Kisner, R.A.; Bhadtt, S.C.

1991-01-01

The following guidelines are proposed for verification and validation (V ampersand V) of nuclear power plant control system software: (a) use risk management to decide what and how much V ampersand V is needed; (b) classify each software application using a scheme that reflects what type and how much V ampersand V is needed; (c) maintain a set of reference documents with current information about each application; (d) use Program Inspection as the initial basic verification method; and (e) establish a deficiencies log for each software application. The following additional practices are strongly recommended: (a) use a computer-based configuration management system to track all aspects of development and maintenance; (b) establish reference baselines of the software, associated reference documents, and development tools at regular intervals during development; (c) use object-oriented design and programming to promote greater software reliability and reuse; (d) provide a copy of the software development environment as part of the package of deliverables; and (e) initiate an effort to use formal methods for preparation of Technical Specifications. The paper provides background information and reasons for the guidelines and recommendations. 3 figs., 3 tabs

Designing flexible, ''chemist-friendly'' software to control a radiochemistry autosynthesizer

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Feliu, A.L.

1989-01-01

To enhance the utility of process control software to control radiochemistry autosynthesizers used with short-lived positron-emitting isotopes, a scheme is proposed by which routine executive-level tasks, hardware control operations, and chemical procedures have been segregated. This strategy can lead to chemist-friendly control programs for any desired hardware configuration, as illustrated in new software designed to exploit the features and flexibility of the CTI/Siemens Chemical Process Control Unit. (author)

Automatic program generation: future of software engineering

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Robinson, J.H.

1979-01-01

At this moment software development is still more of an art than an engineering discipline. Each piece of software is lovingly engineered, nurtured, and presented to the world as a tribute to the writer's skill. When will this change. When will the craftsmanship be removed and the programs be turned out like so many automobiles from an assembly line. Sooner or later it will happen: economic necessities will demand it. With the advent of cheap microcomputers and ever more powerful supercomputers doubling capacity, much more software must be produced. The choices are to double the number of programers, double the efficiency of each programer, or find a way to produce the needed software automatically. Producing software automatically is the only logical choice. How will automatic programing come about. Some of the preliminary actions which need to be done and are being done are to encourage programer plagiarism of existing software through public library mechanisms, produce well understood packages such as compiler automatically, develop languages capable of producing software as output, and learn enough about the whole process of programing to be able to automate it. Clearly, the emphasis must not be on efficiency or size, since ever larger and faster hardware is coming.

New control system: ADA softwares organization

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

David, L.

1992-01-01

On VAX/VMS, ADA compiler is integrated in a workshop of ACS software engineering which allows a coherent development by control of source and executable programs, by separation of applications in various levels of visibility and by management of existing links between different modules of a same application. (A.B.)

A measurement system for large, complex software programs

Science.gov (United States)

Rone, Kyle Y.; Olson, Kitty M.; Davis, Nathan E.

1994-01-01

This paper describes measurement systems required to forecast, measure, and control activities for large, complex software development and support programs. Initial software cost and quality analysis provides the foundation for meaningful management decisions as a project evolves. In modeling the cost and quality of software systems, the relationship between the functionality, quality, cost, and schedule of the product must be considered. This explicit relationship is dictated by the criticality of the software being developed. This balance between cost and quality is a viable software engineering trade-off throughout the life cycle. Therefore, the ability to accurately estimate the cost and quality of software systems is essential to providing reliable software on time and within budget. Software cost models relate the product error rate to the percent of the project labor that is required for independent verification and validation. The criticality of the software determines which cost model is used to estimate the labor required to develop the software. Software quality models yield an expected error discovery rate based on the software size, criticality, software development environment, and the level of competence of the project and developers with respect to the processes being employed.

Hardware And Software Architectures For Reconfigurable Time-Critical Control Tasks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Adam Piłat

2007-01-01

Full Text Available The most popular configuration of the controlled laboratory test-rigs is the personalcomputer (PC equipped with the I/O board. The dedicated software components allowsto conduct a wide range of user-defined tasks. The typical configuration functionality canbe customized by PC hardware components and their programmable reconfiguration. Thenext step in the automatic control system design is the embedded solution. Usually, thedesign process of the embedded control system is supported by the high-level software. Thededicated programming tools support multitasking property of the microcontroller by selectionof different sampling frequencies of algorithm blocks. In this case the multi-layer andmultitasking control strategy can be realized on the chip. The proposed solutions implementrapid prototyping approach. The available toolkits and device drivers integrate system-leveldesign environment and the real-time application software, transferring the functionality ofMATLAB/Simulink programs to PCs or microcontrolers application environment.

Software engineering aspects of real-time programming concepts

Science.gov (United States)

Schoitsch, Erwin

1986-08-01

Real-time programming is a discipline of great importance not only in process control, but also in fields like communication, office automation, interactive databases, interactive graphics and operating systems development. General concepts of concurrent programming and constructs for process-synchronization are discussed in detail. Tasking and synchronization concepts, methods of process communication, interrupt and timeout handling in systems based on semaphores, signals, conditional critical regions or on real-time languages like Concurrent PASCAL, MODULA, CHILL and ADA are explained and compared with each other. The second part deals with structuring and modularization of technical processes to build reliable and maintainable real time systems. Software-quality and software engineering aspects are considered throughout the paper.

Data systems and computer science: Software Engineering Program

Science.gov (United States)

Zygielbaum, Arthur I.

1991-01-01

An external review of the Integrated Technology Plan for the Civil Space Program is presented. This review is specifically concerned with the Software Engineering Program. The goals of the Software Engineering Program are as follows: (1) improve NASA's ability to manage development, operation, and maintenance of complex software systems; (2) decrease NASA's cost and risk in engineering complex software systems; and (3) provide technology to assure safety and reliability of software in mission critical applications.

Windows Calorimeter Control (WinCal) program computer software configuration management plan

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1997-01-01

This document describes the system configuration management activities performed in support of the Windows Calorimeter Control (WinCal) system, in accordance with Site procedures based on Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Standard 828-1990, Standard for Software Configuration Management Plans (IEEE 1990) and IEEE Standard 1042-1987, Guide to Software Configuration Management (IEEE 1987)

Software design practice using two SCADA software packages

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Basse, K.P.; Christensen, Georg Kronborg; Frederiksen, P. K.

1996-01-01

Typical software development for manufacturing control is done either by specialists with consideral real-time programming experience or done by the adaptation of standard software packages for manufacturing control. After investigation and test of two commercial software packages: "InTouch" and ......Touch" and "Fix", it is argued, that a more efficient software solution can be achieved by utilising an integrated specification for SCADA and PLC-programming. Experiences gained from process control is planned investigated for descrete parts manufacturing....

Propulsion/flight control integration technology (PROFIT) software system definition

Science.gov (United States)

Carlin, C. M.; Hastings, W. J.

1978-01-01

The Propulsion Flight Control Integration Technology (PROFIT) program is designed to develop a flying testbed dedicated to controls research. The control software for PROFIT is defined. Maximum flexibility, needed for long term use of the flight facility, is achieved through a modular design. The Host program, processes inputs from the telemetry uplink, aircraft central computer, cockpit computer control and plant sensors to form an input data base for use by the control algorithms. The control algorithms, programmed as application modules, process the input data to generate an output data base. The Host program formats the data for output to the telemetry downlink, the cockpit computer control, and the control effectors. Two applications modules are defined - the bill of materials F-100 engine control and the bill of materials F-15 inlet control.

Formal verification of reactor process control software using assertion checking environment

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sharma, Babita; Balaji, Sowmya; John, Ajith K.; Bhattacharjee, A.K.; Dhodapkar, S.D.

2005-01-01

Assertion Checking Environment (ACE) was developed in-house for carrying out formal (rigorous/ mathematical) functional verification of embedded software written in MISRA C. MISRA C is an industrially sponsored safe sub-set of C programming language and is well accepted in the automotive and aerospace industries. ACE uses static assertion checking technique for verification of MISRA C programs. First the functional specifications of the program are derived from the specifications in the form of pre- and post-conditions for each C function. These pre- and post-conditions are then introduced as assertions (formal comments) in the program code. The annotated C code is then formally verified using ACE. In this paper we present our experience of using ACE for the formal verification of process control software of a nuclear reactor. The Software Requirements Document (SRD) contained textual specifications of the process control software. The SRD was used by the designers to draw logic diagrams which were given as input to a code generator. The verification of the generated C code was done at 2 levels viz. (i) verification against specifications derived from logic diagrams, and (ii) verification against specifications derived from SRD. In this work we checked approximately 600 functional specifications of the software having roughly 15000 lines of code. (author)

NIF Projects Controls and Information Systems Software Quality Assurance Plan

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Fishler, B

2011-03-18

Quality achievement for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and the National Ignition Campaign (NIC) is the responsibility of the NIF Projects line organization as described in the NIF and Photon Science Directorate Quality Assurance Plan (NIF QA Plan). This Software Quality Assurance Plan (SQAP) is subordinate to the NIF QA Plan and establishes quality assurance (QA) activities for the software subsystems within Controls and Information Systems (CIS). This SQAP implements an activity level software quality assurance plan for NIF Projects as required by the LLNL Institutional Software Quality Assurance Program (ISQAP). Planned QA activities help achieve, assess, and maintain appropriate quality of software developed and/or acquired for control systems, shot data systems, laser performance modeling systems, business applications, industrial control and safety systems, and information technology systems. The objective of this SQAP is to ensure that appropriate controls are developed and implemented for management planning, work execution, and quality assessment of the CIS organization's software activities. The CIS line organization places special QA emphasis on rigorous configuration control, change management, testing, and issue tracking to help achieve its quality goals.

NIF Projects Controls and Information Systems Software Quality Assurance Plan

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fishler, B.

2011-01-01

Quality achievement for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and the National Ignition Campaign (NIC) is the responsibility of the NIF Projects line organization as described in the NIF and Photon Science Directorate Quality Assurance Plan (NIF QA Plan). This Software Quality Assurance Plan (SQAP) is subordinate to the NIF QA Plan and establishes quality assurance (QA) activities for the software subsystems within Controls and Information Systems (CIS). This SQAP implements an activity level software quality assurance plan for NIF Projects as required by the LLNL Institutional Software Quality Assurance Program (ISQAP). Planned QA activities help achieve, assess, and maintain appropriate quality of software developed and/or acquired for control systems, shot data systems, laser performance modeling systems, business applications, industrial control and safety systems, and information technology systems. The objective of this SQAP is to ensure that appropriate controls are developed and implemented for management planning, work execution, and quality assessment of the CIS organization's software activities. The CIS line organization places special QA emphasis on rigorous configuration control, change management, testing, and issue tracking to help achieve its quality goals.

System software of the CERN proton synchrotron control system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Carpenter, B.E.; Cailliau, R.; Cuisinier, G.; Remmer, W.

1984-01-01

The PS complex consists of 10 different interconnected accelerators or storage rings, mainly controlled by the same distributed system of NORD-10 and ND-100 minicomputers. After a brief outline of the hardware, this report gives a detailed description of the system software, which is based on the SINTRAN III operating system. It describes the general layout of the software, the network, CAMAC access, programming languages, program development, and microprocessor support. It concludes with reviews of performance, documentation, organization and methods, and future prospects. (orig.)

Development of remote control software for multiformat test signal generator

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gao Yang

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The multi format test signal generator mentioned in this paper is the video signal generator named TG8000 produced by Tektronix Company. I will introduce the function about remote control for signal generator, how to connect the computer to the instrument, and how to remote control. My topic uses my computer to connect the instrument through the 10/100/1000 BASE-T port on the rear panel of TG8000. Then I write program to transmit SCPI (Standard Commands for Programmable Instruments to control TG8000. The application is running on the Windows operating system, the programming language is C#, development environment is Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, using the TCP/IP protocol based on Socket. And the method of remote control refers to the application called TGSetup which is developed by Tektronix Company. This paper includes a brief summary of the basic principle, and introduce for details about the process of remote control software development, and how to use my software. In the end, I will talk about the advantages of my software compared with another one.

Middlesex Community College Software Technical Writing Program.

Science.gov (United States)

Middlesex Community Coll., Bedford, MA.

This document describes the Software Technical Writing Program at Middlesex Community College (Massachusetts). The program is a "hands-on" course designed to develop job-related skills in three major areas: technical writing, software, and professional skills. The program was originally designed in cooperation with the Massachusetts High…

Object oriented programming interfaces for accelerator control

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hoff, L.T.

1997-01-01

Several years ago, the AGS controls group was given the task of developing software for the RHIC accelerator. Like the AGS, the RHIC control system needs to control and monitor equipment distributed around a relatively large geographic area. A local area network connects this equipment to a collection of UNIX workstations in a central control room. Similar software had been developed for the AGS about a decade earlier, but isn't well suited for RHIC use for a number of reasons. Rather than adapt the AGS software for RHIC use, the controls group opted to start with a clean slate. To develop software that would address the shortcomings of the AGS software, while preserving the useful features that evolved through years of use. A current trend in control system design is to provide an object oriented programming interface for application developers. This talk will discuss important aspects and features of object oriented application programming interfaces (APIs) for accelerator control systems, and explore why such interfaces are becoming the norm

Integrated software environment dedicated for implementation of control systems based on PLC controllers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Szymon SURMA

2007-01-01

Full Text Available Industrial processes’ control systems based on PLC controllers play today a very important role in all fields of transport, including also sea transport. Construction of control systems is the field of engineering, which has been continuously evolving towards maximum simplification of system design path. Up to now the time needed forthe system construction from the design to commissioning had to be divided into a few stages. A mistake made in an earlier stage caused that in most cases the next stages had to be restarted. Available debugging systems allows defect detection at an early stage of theproject implementation. The paper presents general characteristic of integrated software for implementation of complex control systems. The issues related to the software use for programming of the visualisation environment, control computer, selection oftransmission medium and transmission protocol as well as PLC controllers’ configuration, software and control have been analysed.

Development of modular control software for construction 3D-printer

Science.gov (United States)

Bazhanov, A.; Yudin, D.; Porkhalo, V.

2018-03-01

This article discusses the approach to developing modular software for real-time control of an industrial construction 3D printer. The proposed structure of a two-level software solution is implemented for a robotic system that moves in a Cartesian coordinate system with multi-axis interpolation. An algorithm for the formation and analysis of a path is considered to enable the most effective control of printing through dynamic programming.

PACE: A dynamic programming algorithm for hardware/software partitioning

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Knudsen, Peter Voigt; Madsen, Jan

1996-01-01

This paper presents the PACE partitioning algorithm which is used in the LYCOS co-synthesis system for partitioning control/dataflow graphs into hardware and software parts. The algorithm is a dynamic programming algorithm which solves both the problem of minimizing system execution time...

Analysis and recommendations for a reliable programming of software based safety systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Nunez McLeod, J.; Nunez McLeod, J.E.; Rivera, S.S.

1997-01-01

The present paper summarizes the results of several studies performed for the development of high software on i486 microprocessors, towards its utilization for control and safety systems for nuclear power plants. The work is based on software programmed in C language. Several recommendations oriented to high reliability software are analyzed, relating the requirements on high level language to its influence on assembler level. Several metrics are implemented, that allow for the quantification of the results achieved. New metrics were developed and other were adapted, in order to obtain more efficient indexes for the software description. Such metrics are helpful to visualize the adaptation of the software under development to the quality rules under use. A specific program developed to assist the reliability analyst on this quantification is also present in the paper. It performs the analysis of an executable program written in C language, disassembling it and evaluating its inter al structures. (author)

Control software development for magnetorheological finishing of large aperture optical elements

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zheng Nan; Li Haibo; Yuan Zhigang; Zhong Bo

2011-01-01

Based on the mechanism of magnetorheological finishing, the dwell time function was solved by Jansson-Van Cit-tert algorithm to accomplish the kernel module design. Then the software modularization programming, modular testing and integration testing were conducted. A verification experiment was carried out on a crystal element with full aperture of 500 mm and the element's surface achieved rapid and efficient convergence after the software controlled magnetorheological finishing. It is proved that the software could control the whole polishing process accurately. (authors)

Metrics-based control in outsourced software development projects

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ponisio, Laura; van Eck, Pascal

2012-01-01

Measurements have been recognised as vital instruments to improve control in outsourced software development projects. However, project managers are still struggling with the design and implementation of effective measurement programs. One reason for this is that although there is a large body of

The Implementation of Satellite Attitude Control System Software Using Object Oriented Design

Science.gov (United States)

Reid, W. Mark; Hansell, William; Phillips, Tom; Anderson, Mark O.; Drury, Derek

1998-01-01

NASA established the Small Explorer (SNMX) program in 1988 to provide frequent opportunities for highly focused and relatively inexpensive space science missions. The SMEX program has produced five satellites, three of which have been successfully launched. The remaining two spacecraft are scheduled for launch within the coming year. NASA has recently developed a prototype for the next generation Small Explorer spacecraft (SMEX-Lite). This paper describes the object-oriented design (OOD) of the SMEX-Lite Attitude Control System (ACS) software. The SMEX-Lite ACS is three-axis controlled and is capable of performing sub-arc-minute pointing. This paper first describes high level requirements governing the SMEX-Lite ACS software architecture. Next, the context in which the software resides is explained. The paper describes the principles of encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism with respect to the implementation of an ACS software system. This paper will also discuss the design of several ACS software components. Specifically, object-oriented designs are presented for sensor data processing, attitude determination, attitude control, and failure detection. Finally, this paper will address the establishment of the ACS Foundation Class (AFC) Library. The AFC is a large software repository, requiring a minimal amount of code modifications to produce ACS software for future projects.

PsyToolkit: a software package for programming psychological experiments using Linux.

Science.gov (United States)

Stoet, Gijsbert

2010-11-01

PsyToolkit is a set of software tools for programming psychological experiments on Linux computers. Given that PsyToolkit is freely available under the Gnu Public License, open source, and designed such that it can easily be modified and extended for individual needs, it is suitable not only for technically oriented Linux users, but also for students, researchers on small budgets, and universities in developing countries. The software includes a high-level scripting language, a library for the programming language C, and a questionnaire presenter. The software easily integrates with other open source tools, such as the statistical software package R. PsyToolkit is designed to work with external hardware (including IoLab and Cedrus response keyboards and two common digital input/output boards) and to support millisecond timing precision. Four in-depth examples explain the basic functionality of PsyToolkit. Example 1 demonstrates a stimulus-response compatibility experiment. Example 2 demonstrates a novel mouse-controlled visual search experiment. Example 3 shows how to control light emitting diodes using PsyToolkit, and Example 4 shows how to build a light-detection sensor. The last two examples explain the electronic hardware setup such that they can even be used with other software packages.

The RTC - a software support system for the control of the CERN SPS

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Herr, W.; Lauckner, R.; Morpurga, G.

1989-01-01

The RTC (Run Time Coordinator) is a software support system designed for the SPS control system to provide a runtime environment for application software. It coordinates the execution of individual programs or processes and supervises the process control, i.e. process synchronization, inter process communication, data transfer and operator I/O. This supervision includes the control of processes distributed on a UNIX based network. A standard language independent data interface is part of the system. The system includes tools for data presentation, error logging and contention resolution. This strategy of separating system dependent features from the body of the application programs leads to high flexibility and simplifies the software development. The basic philosophy of the RTC is discussed and its implementation is described. 7 refs

Software and the future of programming languages.

Science.gov (United States)

Aho, Alfred V

2004-02-27

Although software is the key enabler of the global information infrastructure, the amount and extent of software in use in the world today are not widely understood, nor are the programming languages and paradigms that have been used to create the software. The vast size of the embedded base of existing software and the increasing costs of software maintenance, poor security, and limited functionality are posing significant challenges for the software R&D community.

A survey of program slicing for software engineering

Science.gov (United States)

Beck, Jon

1993-01-01

This research concerns program slicing which is used as a tool for program maintainence of software systems. Program slicing decreases the level of effort required to understand and maintain complex software systems. It was first designed as a debugging aid, but it has since been generalized into various tools and extended to include program comprehension, module cohesion estimation, requirements verification, dead code elimination, and maintainence of several software systems, including reverse engineering, parallelization, portability, and reuse component generation. This paper seeks to address and define terminology, theoretical concepts, program representation, different program graphs, developments in static slicing, dynamic slicing, and semantics and mathematical models. Applications for conventional slicing are presented, along with a prognosis of future work in this field.

Air Vehicle Technology Integration Program (AVTIP) Delivery Order 0008: Open Control Platform (OCP) Software Enabled Control (SEC) Hardware in the Loop Simulation Program

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Portilla, Eric

2004-01-01

...) contract awarded to Northrop Grumman Corporation (NGC). The OCP HITL program developed a Hardware-in-the Loop facility for demonstrating and evaluating High-Confidence Software and Systems (HCSS...

A Component-Oriented Programming for Embedded Mobile Robot Software

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Safaai Deris

2008-11-01

Full Text Available Applying software reuse to many Embedded Real-Time (ERT systems poses significant challenges to industrial software processes due to the resource-constrained and real-time requirements of the systems. Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR system is a class of ERT systems, hence, inherits the challenge of applying software reuse in general ERT systems. Furthermore, software reuse in AMR systems is challenged by the diversities in terms of robot physical size and shape, environmental interaction and implementation platform. Thus, it is envisioned that component-based software engineering will be the suitable way to promote software reuse in AMR systems with consideration to general requirements to be self-contained, platform-independent and real-time predictable. A framework for component-oriented programming for AMR software development using PECOS component model is proposed in this paper. The main features of this framework are: (1 use graphical representation for components definition and composition; (2 target C language for optimal code generation with resource-constrained micro-controller; and (3 minimal requirement for run-time support. Real-time implementation indicates that, the PECOS component model together with the proposed framework is suitable for resource constrained embedded AMR systems software development.

The Implementation of Satellite Control System Software Using Object Oriented Design

Science.gov (United States)

Anderson, Mark O.; Reid, Mark; Drury, Derek; Hansell, William; Phillips, Tom

1998-01-01

NASA established the Small Explorer (SMEX) program in 1988 to provide frequent opportunities for highly focused and relatively inexpensive space science missions that can be launched into low earth orbit by small expendable vehicles. The development schedule for each SMEX spacecraft was three years from start to launch. The SMEX program has produced five satellites; Solar Anomalous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer (SAMPEX), Fast Auroral Snapshot Explorer (FAST), Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS), Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) and Wide-Field Infrared Explorer (WIRE). SAMPEX and FAST are on-orbit, TRACE is scheduled to be launched in April of 1998, WIRE is scheduled to be launched in September of 1998, and SWAS is scheduled to be launched in January of 1999. In each of these missions, the Attitude Control System (ACS) software was written using a modular procedural design. Current program goals require complete spacecraft development within 18 months. This requirement has increased pressure to write reusable flight software. Object-Oriented Design (OOD) offers the constructs for developing an application that only needs modification for mission unique requirements. This paper describes the OOD that was used to develop the SMEX-Lite ACS software. The SMEX-Lite ACS is three-axis controlled, momentum stabilized, and is capable of performing sub-arc-minute pointing. The paper first describes the high level requirements which governed the architecture of the SMEX-Lite ACS software. Next, the context in which the software resides is explained. The paper describes the benefits of encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism with respect to the implementation of an ACS software system. This paper will discuss the design of several software components that comprise the ACS software. Specifically, Object-Oriented designs are presented for sensor data processing, attitude control, attitude determination and failure detection. The paper addresses

Repository-based software engineering program

Science.gov (United States)

Wilson, James

1992-01-01

The activities performed during September 1992 in support of Tasks 01 and 02 of the Repository-Based Software Engineering Program are outlined. The recommendations and implementation strategy defined at the September 9-10 meeting of the Reuse Acquisition Action Team (RAAT) are attached along with the viewgraphs and reference information presented at the Institute for Defense Analyses brief on legal and patent issues related to software reuse.

Software development for the PBX-M plasma control system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lagin, L.; Bell, R.; Chu, J.; Hatcher, R.; Hirsch, J.; Okabayashi, M.; Sichta, P.

1995-01-01

This paper describes the software development effort for the PBX-M plasma control system. The algorithms being developed for the system will serve to test advanced control concepts for TPX and ITER. This will include real-time algorithms for shaping control, vertical position control, current and density profile control and MHD avoidance. The control system consists of an interactive Host Processor (SPARC-10) interfaced through VME with four real-time Computer Processors (i860) which run at a maximum computational speed of 320 MFLOPs. Plasma shaping programs are being tested to duplicate the present PBX-M analog control system. Advanced algorithms for vertical control and x-point control will then be developed. Interactive graphical user interface programs running on the Host Processor will allow operators to control and monitor shot parameters. A waveform edit program will be used to download pre-programmed waveforms into the Compute Processor memory. Post-shot display programs will be used to interactively display data after the shot. Automatic pre-shot arming and data acquisition programs will run on the Host Processor. Event system programs will process interrupts and activate programs on the Host and Compute Processors. These programs are being written in C and Fortran and use system service routines to communicate with the Compute Processors and its memory. IDL and IDL widgets are being used to build the graphical user interfaces

Modularity analysis of automotive control software

OpenAIRE

Dajsuren, Y.; Brand, van den, M.G.J.; Serebrenik, A.

2013-01-01

A design language and tool like MATLAB/Simulink is used for the graphical modelling and simulation of automotive control software. As the functionality based on electronics and software systems increases in motor vehicles, it is becoming increasingly important for system/software architects and control engineers in the automotive industry to ensure the quality of the highly complex MATLAB/Simulink control software. For automotive software, modularity is recognized as being a crucial quality a...

Hardware replacements and software tools for digital control computers

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Walker, R.A.P.; Wang, B-C.; Fung, J.

1996-01-01

Technological obsolescence is an on-going challenge for all computer use. By design, and to some extent good fortune, AECL has had a good track record with respect to the march of obsolescence in CANDU digital control computer technology. Recognizing obsolescence as a fact of life, AECL has undertaken a program of supporting the digital control technology of existing CANDU plants. Other AECL groups are developing complete replacement systems for the digital control computers, and more advanced systems for the digital control computers of the future CANDU reactors. This paper presents the results of the efforts of AECL's DCC service support group to replace obsolete digital control computer and related components and to provide friendlier software technology related to the maintenance and use of digital control computers in CANDU. These efforts are expected to extend the current lifespan of existing digital control computers through their mandated life. This group applied two simple rules; the product, whether new or replacement should have a generic basis, and the products should be applicable to both existing CANDU plants and to 'repeat' plant designs built using current design guidelines. While some exceptions do apply, the rules have been met. The generic requirement dictates that the product should not be dependent on any brand technology, and should back-fit to and interface with any such technology which remains in the control design. The application requirement dictates that the product should have universal use and be user friendly to the greatest extent possible. Furthermore, both requirements were designed to anticipate user involvement, modifications and alternate user defined applications. The replacements for hardware components such as paper tape reader/punch, moving arm disk, contact scanner and Ramtek are discussed. The development of these hardware replacements coincide with the development of a gateway system for selected CANDU digital control

Command and Control Software Development Memory Management

Science.gov (United States)

Joseph, Austin Pope

2017-01-01

This internship was initially meant to cover the implementation of unit test automation for a NASA ground control project. As is often the case with large development projects, the scope and breadth of the internship changed. Instead, the internship focused on finding and correcting memory leaks and errors as reported by a COTS software product meant to track such issues. Memory leaks come in many different flavors and some of them are more benign than others. On the extreme end a program might be dynamically allocating memory and not correctly deallocating it when it is no longer in use. This is called a direct memory leak and in the worst case can use all the available memory and crash the program. If the leaks are small they may simply slow the program down which, in a safety critical system (a system for which a failure or design error can cause a risk to human life), is still unacceptable. The ground control system is managed in smaller sub-teams, referred to as CSCIs. The CSCI that this internship focused on is responsible for monitoring the health and status of the system. This team's software had several methods/modules that were leaking significant amounts of memory. Since most of the code in this system is safety-critical, correcting memory leaks is a necessity.

Round table discussion: Quality control and standardization of nuclear medicine software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Anon.

1988-01-01

In summary the round table came to the following important conclusions: Nuclear medicine software systems need better documentation, especially regarding details of algorithms and limitations, and user friendliness could be considerably improved. Quality control of software is an integral part of quality assurance in nuclear medicine and should be performed at all levels of the software. Quality control of applications software should preferably be performed with assistance of generally accepted software phantoms. A basic form of standardization was welcomed and partly regarded as essential by all participants. Some areas such as patient study files could be standardized in the near future, whereas other areas such as the standardization of clinical applications programs or acquisition protocols still present major difficulties. An international cooperation in the field of standardization of software and other topics has already been started on the European level and should be continued and supported. (orig.)

Creating the next generation control system software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Schultz, D.E.

1989-01-01

A new 1980's style support package for future accelerator control systems is proposed. It provides a way to create accelerator applications software without traditional programming. Visual Interactive Applications (VIA) is designed to meet the needs of expanded accelerator complexes in a more cost effective way than past experience with procedural languages by using technology from the personal computer and artificial intelligence communities. 4 refs

Consideration of a Learning Programming Process based on Software Design for Beginners

OpenAIRE

大村, 基将; 紅林, 秀治

2016-01-01

We considered a learning programming process based on software design for technology education. Lessons of computer program-aided measurement and control are for beginners to learn programming. These lessons are efficient to learn the step of programming, but the main of the lessons are works of typing the sample programming and debugging. Therefore, these lessons have a fundamental lack of the concept of design. Then we considered learning processes of programming and applied the process of ...

Empirical Studies of Agile Software Development to Learn Programming Skills

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yasuyo Kofune

2014-06-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a programming education support method based on Agile Development that encourages and builds on communication between students. Through mutual discussion, students using our approach transform their ideas into software and cooperate to write a program. The students complete the software through repetition and programming. Before completing the software program, the students learn to solve problems by working together. The students are encouraged to think and share ideas, and gain experience writing software. With this approach, students not only learn how to write programs, but also increase their logical thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills.

Modular system for the control of complex accelerators using portable software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

von der Schmitt, H.; Aufhaus, H.

1982-01-01

When designing the Mainz Microtron control system, care was taken to achieve an expandable system with long-lived application software. A multi-processor system was built from the beginning. The software is split into modules, according to function and position in hierarchy, which are distributed over the computers. The decoupling which results from modularity eases software development and maintainance. RATFOR was chosen as implementation language. With a message system for communication between the modules, several aims were reached at once: (1) symbolic addressing of the accelerator components throughout the software layers, (2) transparent access to I/O devices (CAMAC) at remote computers, (3) multitasking in FORTRAN (and RATFOR) programs, (4) a separating layer for adaptation to different operating systems - essential points for software portability. The system is in operation since April 1979 for the control of MAMI stage I

Lean and Efficient Software: Whole-Program Optimization of Executables

Science.gov (United States)

2015-09-30

Lean and Efficient Software: Whole-Program Optimization of Executables” Project Summary Report #5 (Report Period: 7/1/2015 to 9/30/2015...TYPE 3. DATES COVERED 00-00-2015 to 00-00-2015 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE Lean and Efficient Software: Whole-Program Optimization of Executables 5a...unclassified c. THIS PAGE unclassified Standard Form 298 (Rev. 8-98) Prescribed by ANSI Std Z39-18 Lean and Efficient Software: Whole-Program

Design and development of virtual TXP control system software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wang Yunwei; Leng Shan; Liu Zhisheng; Wang Qiang; Shang Yanxia

2008-01-01

Taking distributed control system (DCS) of Siemens TELEPERM-XP (TXP) as the simulation object,Virtual TXP (VTXP) control system based on Virtual DCS with high fidelity and reliability was designed and developed on the platform of Windows. In the process of development, the method of object-oriented modeling and modularization program design are adopted, C++ language and technologies such as multithreading, ActiveX control, Socket network communication are used, to realize the wide range dynamic simulation and recreate the functions of the hardware and software of real TXP. This paper puts emphasis on the design and realization of Control server and Communication server. The development of Virtual TXP control system software is with great effect on the construction of simulation system and the design, commission, verification and maintenance of control system in large-scale power plants, nuclear power plants and combined cycle power plants. (authors)

Balancing technical and regulatory concerns related to testing and control of performance assessment software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Seitz, R.R.; Matthews, S.D.; Kostelnik, K.M.

1990-01-01

What activities are required to assure that a performance assessment (PA) computer code operates as it is intended? Answers to this question will vary depending on the individual's area of expertise. Different perspectives on testing and control of PA software are discussed based on interpretations of the testing and control process associated with the different involved parties. This discussion leads into the presentation of a general approach to software testing and control that address regulatory requirements. Finally, the need for balance between regulatory and scientific concerns is illustrated through lessons learned in previous implementations of software testing and control programs. Configuration control and software testing are required to provide assurance that a computer code performs as intended. Configuration control provides traceability and reproducibility of results produced with PA software and provides a system to assure that users have access to the current version of the software. Software testing is conducted to assure that the computer code has been written properly, solution techniques have been properly implemented, and the software is capable of representing the behavior of the specific system to be modeled. Comprehensive software testing includes: software analysis, verification testing, benchmark testing, and site-specific calibration/validation testing

OPTICON: Pro-Matlab software for large order controlled structure design

Science.gov (United States)

Peterson, Lee D.

1989-01-01

A software package for large order controlled structure design is described and demonstrated. The primary program, called OPTICAN, uses both Pro-Matlab M-file routines and selected compiled FORTRAN routines linked into the Pro-Matlab structure. The program accepts structural model information in the form of state-space matrices and performs three basic design functions on the model: (1) open loop analyses; (2) closed loop reduced order controller synthesis; and (3) closed loop stability and performance assessment. The current controller synthesis methods which were implemented in this software are based on the Generalized Linear Quadratic Gaussian theory of Bernstein. In particular, a reduced order Optimal Projection synthesis algorithm based on a homotopy solution method was successfully applied to an experimental truss structure using a 58-state dynamic model. These results are presented and discussed. Current plans to expand the practical size of the design model to several hundred states and the intention to interface Pro-Matlab to a supercomputing environment are discussed.

Control and analysis software for a laser scanning microdensitometer

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

A PC-based control software and data acquisition system is devel- oped for an existing ... Description of the system. Figure 1 shows a schematic diagram of the microdensitometer and the data acquisition system. ... ming language with very strong library functions and it also supports direct input/output programming. 5.

Software programming languages for use in developing safety systems of nuclear power plant

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Lee, Jang Soo

1997-07-01

This report provides guidance to a verifier on reviewing of programs for safety systems written in the high level languages, such as Ada, C, and C++. The focus of the report is on programming, not design, requirements engineering, or testing. We have defined the attributes, for example, reliability, robustness, traceability, and maintainability, which largely define a general quality of software related to safety. Although an extensive revision to the standard of Ada occurred in 1995, current compiler implementations are insufficiently mature to be considered for safety systems. The discussion on C program emphasized the problem in memory allocation and deallocation, pointers, control flow, and software interface. (author). 26 refs.

ASTEC and MODEL: Controls software development at Goddard Space Flight Center

Science.gov (United States)

Downing, John P.; Bauer, Frank H.; Surber, Jeffrey L.

1993-01-01

The ASTEC (Analysis and Simulation Tools for Engineering Controls) software is under development at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The design goal is to provide a wide selection of controls analysis tools at the personal computer level, as well as the capability to upload compute-intensive jobs to a mainframe or supercomputer. In the last three years the ASTEC (Analysis and Simulation Tools for Engineering Controls) software has been under development. ASTEC is meant to be an integrated collection of controls analysis tools for use at the desktop level. MODEL (Multi-Optimal Differential Equation Language) is a translator that converts programs written in the MODEL language to FORTRAN. An upgraded version of the MODEL program will be merged into ASTEC. MODEL has not been modified since 1981 and has not kept with changes in computers or user interface techniques. This paper describes the changes made to MODEL in order to make it useful in the 90's and how it relates to ASTEC.

Application oriented programming and control of industrial robots

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Nilsson, Klas.

1992-07-01

Efficient use of industrial robots requires a strong interplay between user level commands, the motion control system, and external equipment. It should also be possible for an experienced application engineer to tailor the motion control to a specific application in a convenient way, instead of deficient utilization of the device or tricky user programming which is often the case today. A layered software architecture has been designed based on an application oriented view, considering typical hardware and software constraints. The top layers or the architecture support improved integration of off-line programming with interactive teach-in programming. The proposed solution is based on a transformation of robot programs between an on-line and an off-line representation. A central part of the architecture is an intermediate software layer, allowing the experienced user to introduce application specific motion primitives, on top of the motion control system. Flexibility during system configuration combined with computing efficiency and performance at run-time is of major importance. The solution is based on so called actions, which are methods to be passed between different software layers. Such methods can be specification of nonlinear control parameters, application specific control strategies, or treatment of external sensor signals. The actions can be implemented efficiently even in the multiprocessor case by using relocatable executable pieces of code generated from a special cross-compilation strategy. The lowest layers, comprising the motion control, have to be efficient and still fit in with the upper layers. In these layers, software solutions include an external sensor interface and a concept of motion pipelining allowing sensor based motions to be partly computed in advance. An experimental platform, built around commercially available robots, has been developed to verify the proposed solutions. (au)

Toy Control Program evaluation.

Science.gov (United States)

Stewart, H A; Ormond, C; Seeger, B R

1991-08-01

The Toy Control Program for the Apple IIe microcomputer is a software and hardware package developed for the training of single-switch scanning skills. The specially designed scanning programs provide on screen visual feedback and activate a battery-powered toy to reinforce performance. This study examined whether the training of preschool subjects in single-switch scanning skills with the Toy Control Program would result in increased task completion scores and increased levels of attention to task, as compared with conditions of toy activation only and microcomputer programs with screen reinforcement only. The results showed that the subjects paid significantly more attention to the toys as reinforcers (p less than .01). No significant difference was found for the performance results of the three conditions. These findings support the use of a program like the Toy Control Program, which integrates the instructional capabilities of a computer with the reinforcement potential of a toy and the creativity of a therapist.

Software For Computer-Aided Design Of Control Systems

Science.gov (United States)

Wette, Matthew

1994-01-01

Computer Aided Engineering System (CAESY) software developed to provide means to evaluate methods for dealing with users' needs in computer-aided design of control systems. Interpreter program for performing engineering calculations. Incorporates features of both Ada and MATLAB. Designed to be flexible and powerful. Includes internally defined functions, procedures and provides for definition of functions and procedures by user. Written in C language.

Quality control in diagnostic radiology: software (Visual Basic 6) and database applications

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Md Saion Salikin; Muhammad Farid Abdul Khalid

2002-01-01

Quality Assurance programme in diagnostic Radiology is being implemented by the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Malaysia. Under this program the performance of an x-ray machine used for diagnostic purpose is tested by using the approved procedure which is commonly known as Quality Control in diagnostic radiology. The quality control or performance tests are carried out b a class H licence holder issued the Atomic Energy Licensing Act 1984. There are a few computer applications (software) that are available in the market which can be used for this purpose. A computer application (software) using Visual Basics 6 and Microsoft Access, is being developed to expedite data handling, analysis and storage as well as report writing of the quality control tests. In this paper important features of the software for quality control tests are explained in brief. A simple database is being established for this purpose which is linked to the software. Problems encountered in the preparation of database are discussed in this paper. A few examples of practical usage of the software and database applications are presented in brief. (Author)

Graphical programming: On-line robot simulation for telerobotic control

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

McDonald, M.J.; Palmquist, R.D.

1993-01-01

Sandia has developed an advanced operational control system approach, caged Graphical Programming, to design and operate robotic waste cleanup and other hazardous duty robotic systems. The Graphical Programming approach produces robot systems that are faster to develop and use, safer in operation, and cheaper overall than altemative teleoperation or autonomous robot control systems. The Graphical Programming approach uses 3-D visualization and simulation software with intuitive operator interfaces for the programming and control of complex robotic systems. Graphical Programming Supervisor software modules allow an operator to command and simulate complex tasks in a graphic preview mode and, when acceptable, command the actual robots and monitor their motions with the graphic system. Graphical Progranuning Supervisors maintain registration with the real world and allow the robot to perform tasks that cannot be accurately represented with models alone by using a combination of model and sensor-based control. This paper describes the Graphical Programming approach, several example control systems that use Graphical Programming, and key features necessary for implementing successful Graphical Programming systems

Software-Programmed Optical Networking with Integrated NFV Service Provisioning

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mehmeri, Victor; Wang, Xi; Basu, Shrutarshi

2017-01-01

We showcase demonstrations of “program & compile” styled optical networking as well as open platforms & standards based NFV service provisioning using a proof-of-concept implementation of the Software-Programmed Networking Operating System (SPN OS).......We showcase demonstrations of “program & compile” styled optical networking as well as open platforms & standards based NFV service provisioning using a proof-of-concept implementation of the Software-Programmed Networking Operating System (SPN OS)....

Software quality assurance plan for the National Ignition Facility integrated computer control system

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Woodruff, J.

1996-11-01

Quality achievement is the responsibility of the line organizations of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) Project. This Software Quality Assurance Plan (SQAP) applies to the activities of the Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS) organization and its subcontractors. The Plan describes the activities implemented by the ICCS section to achieve quality in the NIF Project`s controls software and implements the NIF Quality Assurance Program Plan (QAPP, NIF-95-499, L-15958-2) and the Department of Energy`s (DOE`s) Order 5700.6C. This SQAP governs the quality affecting activities associated with developing and deploying all control system software during the life cycle of the NIF Project.

Software quality assurance plan for the National Ignition Facility integrated computer control system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Woodruff, J.

1996-11-01

Quality achievement is the responsibility of the line organizations of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) Project. This Software Quality Assurance Plan (SQAP) applies to the activities of the Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS) organization and its subcontractors. The Plan describes the activities implemented by the ICCS section to achieve quality in the NIF Project's controls software and implements the NIF Quality Assurance Program Plan (QAPP, NIF-95-499, L-15958-2) and the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Order 5700.6C. This SQAP governs the quality affecting activities associated with developing and deploying all control system software during the life cycle of the NIF Project

Application of a path sensitizing method on automated generation of test specifications for control software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Morimoto, Yuuichi; Fukuda, Mitsuko

1995-01-01

An automated generation method for test specifications has been developed for sequential control software in plant control equipment. Sequential control software can be represented as sequential circuits. The control software implemented in a control equipment is designed from these circuit diagrams. In logic tests of VLSI's, path sensitizing methods are widely used to generate test specifications. But the method generates test specifications at a single time only, and can not be directly applied to sequential control software. The basic idea of the proposed method is as follows. Specifications of each logic operator in the diagrams are defined in the software design process. Therefore, test specifications of each operator in the control software can be determined from these specifications, and validity of software can be judged by inspecting all of the operators in the logic circuit diagrams. Candidates for sensitized paths, on which test data for each operator propagates, can be generated by the path sensitizing method. To confirm feasibility of the method, it was experimentally applied to control software in digital control equipment. The program could generate test specifications exactly, and feasibility of the method was confirmed. (orig.) (3 refs., 7 figs.)

Instrument control software development process for the multi-star AO system ARGOS

Science.gov (United States)

Kulas, M.; Barl, L.; Borelli, J. L.; Gässler, W.; Rabien, S.

2012-09-01

The ARGOS project (Advanced Rayleigh guided Ground layer adaptive Optics System) will upgrade the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) with an AO System consisting of six Rayleigh laser guide stars. This adaptive optics system integrates several control loops and many different components like lasers, calibration swing arms and slope computers that are dispersed throughout the telescope. The purpose of the instrument control software (ICS) is running this AO system and providing convenient client interfaces to the instruments and the control loops. The challenges for the ARGOS ICS are the development of a distributed and safety-critical software system with no defects in a short time, the creation of huge and complex software programs with a maintainable code base, the delivery of software components with the desired functionality and the support of geographically distributed project partners. To tackle these difficult tasks, the ARGOS software engineers reuse existing software like the novel middleware from LINC-NIRVANA, an instrument for the LBT, provide many tests at different functional levels like unit tests and regression tests, agree about code and architecture style and deliver software incrementally while closely collaborating with the project partners. Many ARGOS ICS components are already successfully in use in the laboratories for testing ARGOS control loops.

Space Telescope Pointing Control System software

Science.gov (United States)

Dougherty, H.; Rodoni, C.; Rossini, R.; Tompetrini, K.; Nakashima, A.; Bradley, A.

1982-01-01

The Space Telescope Pointing Control System software is in the advanced development stage, having been tested on both the airbearing and the static simulator. The overall structure of the software is discussed, along with timing and sizing evaluations. The interaction between the controls analysts and software designer is described.

A New Control System Software for SANS BATAN Spectrometer in Serpong, Indonesia

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bharoto; Putra, Edy Giri Rachman

2010-01-01

The original main control system of the 36 meter small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) BATAN Spectrometer (SMARTer) has been replaced with the new ones due to the malfunction of the main computer. For that reason, a new control system software for handling all the control systems was also developed in order to put the spectrometer back in operation. The developed software is able to control the system such as rotation movement of six pinholes system, vertical movement of four neutron guide system with the total length of 16.5 m, two-directional movement of a neutron beam stopper, forward-backward movement of a 2D position sensitive detector (2D-PSD) along 16.7 m, etc. A Visual Basic language program running on Windows operating system was employed to develop the software and it can be operated by other remote computers in the local area network. All device positions and command menu are displayed graphically in the main monitor or window and each device control can be executed by clicking the control button. Those advantages are necessary required for developing a new user-friendly control system software. Finally, the new software has been tested for handling a complete SANS experiment and it works properly.

A comparison of software programs to determine curie content

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hansen, C.J.; Miller C.C.

1995-01-01

Commercial nuclear power plants have used various methods to determine the curie content of radwaste packages to comply with shipping and disposal regulations. Several computer software packages are available which can determine the curie content of a package based on the geometry of the package and the dose rate of the package provided a given source spectrum. This paper will compare three of the more commonly used software packages. A brief review of the selection and use of software programs at Diablo Canyon Power Plant for radwaste and radioactive material shipments will be provided. These software packages are the PAKRAD program by Bechtel (which utilizes EPRI DOSCON data), RAMSHP by WMG and MICROSHIELD by Grove Engineering. A comparison of the software packages in the calculation of curie content for a box of dry active waste and a cartridge filter will be presented. A summary of program limitations will also be provided

A software methodology for compiling quantum programs

Science.gov (United States)

Häner, Thomas; Steiger, Damian S.; Svore, Krysta; Troyer, Matthias

2018-04-01

Quantum computers promise to transform our notions of computation by offering a completely new paradigm. To achieve scalable quantum computation, optimizing compilers and a corresponding software design flow will be essential. We present a software architecture for compiling quantum programs from a high-level language program to hardware-specific instructions. We describe the necessary layers of abstraction and their differences and similarities to classical layers of a computer-aided design flow. For each layer of the stack, we discuss the underlying methods for compilation and optimization. Our software methodology facilitates more rapid innovation among quantum algorithm designers, quantum hardware engineers, and experimentalists. It enables scalable compilation of complex quantum algorithms and can be targeted to any specific quantum hardware implementation.

Software for the ACP [Advanced Computer Program] multiprocessor system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Biel, J.; Areti, H.; Atac, R.

1987-01-01

Software has been developed for use with the Fermilab Advanced Computer Program (ACP) multiprocessor system. The software was designed to make a system of a hundred independent node processors as easy to use as a single, powerful CPU. Subroutines have been developed by which a user's host program can send data to and get results from the program running in each of his ACP node processors. Utility programs make it easy to compile and link host and node programs, to debug a node program on an ACP development system, and to submit a debugged program to an ACP production system

Methods of Software Quality Assurance under a Nuclear Quality Assurance Program

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kim, Jang Yeol; Lee, Young Jun; Cha, Kyung Ho; Cheon, Se Woo; Lee, Jang Soo; Kwon, Kee Choon

2005-01-01

This paper addresses a substantial implementation of a software quality assurance under a nuclear quality assurance program. The relationship of the responsibility between a top-level nuclear quality assurance program such as ASME/NQA-1 and its lower level software quality assurance is described. Software quality assurance activities and software quality assurance procedures during the software development life cycle are also described

Simulation-based Testing of Control Software

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ozmen, Ozgur [Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Nutaro, James J. [Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Sanyal, Jibonananda [Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Olama, Mohammed M. [Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

2017-02-10

It is impossible to adequately test complex software by examining its operation in a physical prototype of the system monitored. Adequate test coverage can require millions of test cases, and the cost of equipment prototypes combined with the real-time constraints of testing with them makes it infeasible to sample more than a small number of these tests. Model based testing seeks to avoid this problem by allowing for large numbers of relatively inexpensive virtual prototypes that operate in simulation time at a speed limited only by the available computing resources. In this report, we describe how a computer system emulator can be used as part of a model based testing environment; specifically, we show that a complete software stack including operating system and application software - can be deployed within a simulated environment, and that these simulations can proceed as fast as possible. To illustrate this approach to model based testing, we describe how it is being used to test several building control systems that act to coordinate air conditioning loads for the purpose of reducing peak demand. These tests involve the use of ADEVS (A Discrete Event System Simulator) and QEMU (Quick Emulator) to host the operational software within the simulation, and a building model developed with the MODELICA programming language using Buildings Library and packaged as an FMU (Functional Mock-up Unit) that serves as the virtual test environment.

Software engineering practices for control system reliability

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

S. K. Schaffner; K. S White

1999-01-01

This paper will discuss software engineering practices used to improve Control System reliability. The authors begin with a brief discussion of the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model (CMM) which is a framework for evaluating and improving key practices used to enhance software development and maintenance capabilities. The software engineering processes developed and used by the Controls Group at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab), using the Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) for accelerator control, are described. Examples are given of how their procedures have been used to minimized control system downtime and improve reliability. While their examples are primarily drawn from their experience with EPICS, these practices are equally applicable to any control system. Specific issues addressed include resource allocation, developing reliable software lifecycle processes and risk management

Software for mass spectrometer control

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Curuia, Marian; Culcer, Mihai; Anghel, Mihai; Iliescu, Mariana; Trancota, Dan; Kaucsar, Martin; Oprea, Cristiana

2004-01-01

The paper describes a software application for the MAT 250 mass spectrometer control, which was refurbished. The spectrometer was bring-up-to-date using a hardware structure on its support where the software application for mass spectrometer control was developed . The software application is composed of dedicated modules that perform given operations. The instructions that these modules have to perform are generated by a principal module. This module makes possible the change of information between the modules that compose the software application. The use of a modal structure is useful for adding new functions in the future. The developed application in our institute made possible the transformation of the mass spectrometer MAT 250 into a device endowed with other new generation tools. (authors)

The use of controlling-training software in civil engineering bachelors’ educational process

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rekunov Sergey

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The paper considers the current state of the higher education system of the Russian Federation in the context of teaching disciplines of strength cycle with the use of information educational technologies. The educational process in the discipline “Structural Mechanics” is shown by using the Controlling-Training Software on the sample program “Statically Determinate Plane Truss”. Such software was developed by employees of the Department of Structural Mechanics of the Institute of Architecture and Civil Engineering of Volgograd State Technical University to heighten student’s interest in calculations of building structures while using computer-based teaching methods, as well as to simplify the existing monitoring procedure. The Controlling-Training Software makes it possible not only to consolidate but also to independently assess the acquired theoretical knowledge. Working with this program displays all necessary information: the calculated scheme, the area of issues, an area with a commentary on the input response. Help files contain a sufficient amount of theoretical material with examples of solutions. Students have several attempts to enter their answer. If they are unsuccessful, then the screen displays the correct answer with visual graphic illustration and explanation of this issue. Carrying out the educational process by use of the Controlling-Training Software resulted in saving a significant amount of academic time.

System requirements for one-time-use ENRAF control panel software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

HUBER, J.H.

1999-01-01

An Enraf Densitometer is installed on tank 241-AY-102. The Densitometer will frequently be tasked to obtain and log density profiles. The activity can be effected a number of ways. Enraf Incorporated provides a software package called ''Logger18'' to its customers for the purpose of in-shop testing of their gauges. Logger18 is capable of accepting an input file which can direct the gauge to obtain a density profile for a given tank level and bottom limit. Logger18 is a complex, DOS based program which will require trained technicians and/or tank farm entries to obtain the data. ALARA considerations have prompted the development of a more user-friendly, computer-based interface to the Enraf densitometers. This document records the plan by which this new Enraf data acquisition software will be developed, reviewed, verified, and released. This plan applies to the development and implementation of a one-time-use software program, which will be called ''Enraf Control Panel.'' The software will be primarily used for remote operation of Enraf Densitometers for the purpose of obtaining and logging tank product density profiles

Software design for the EBT-P data acquisition and control system R and D

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Boyd, R.A.

1983-01-01

The instrumentation and control system for the EBT-P device is composed of a hierarchy of programmable logic controllers, microprocessor-based data acquisition computers, and a large minicomputer-based facility computer system. The software being developed to support this data acquisition and control system is necessarily quite complex due to several requirements imposed upon the EBT-P overall design criteria. These requirements, which include such considerations as overall reliability, operator interface, real-time display, interprocessor communication, and minimum cost to build, operate, and maintain, dictate that the software be developed in a well structured and controlled manner. To this end, structured software engineering practices are being applied to the design and development of the EBT-P data acquistion and control software. The design process began with the production of a software Requirements Document which describes the hardware and software environment in which the software development takes place. It identifies the major deliverable software items to be produced and describes the practices to be used to design and develop the software. The software design is split into three components: the facility computer software, the microcomputer software, and the PLC software. Within these physical boundaries, the following five functions are defined: data acquisition, display, communication, storage, and control. The software design is further detailed in a Structured Specification Document for each of the three physical components. Each specification describes the software in detailed terms so that a programmer can directly write the required software. Each specification is composed of: data flow diagrams, a data dictionary, structure diagrams, and program design language mini-specifications. Examples of the design issues exposed and addressed during the structured decomposition of EBT-P software processes are discussed in detail

An integrated software testing framework for FGA-based controllers in nuclear power plants

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kim, Jae Yeob; Kim, Eun Sub; Yoo, Jun Beom; Lee, Young Jun; Choi, Jong Gyun

2016-01-01

Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) have received much attention from the nuclear industry as an alternative platform to programmable logic controllers for digital instrumentation and control. The software aspect of FPGA development consists of several steps of synthesis and refinement, and also requires verification activities, such as simulations that are performed individually at each step. This study proposed an integrated software-testing framework for simulating all artifacts of the FPGA software development simultaneously and evaluating whether all artifacts work correctly using common oracle programs. This method also generates a massive number of meaningful simulation scenarios that reflect reactor shutdown logics. The experiment, which was performed on two FPGA software implementations, showed that it can dramatically save both time and costs

On Model Based Synthesis of Embedded Control Software

OpenAIRE

Alimguzhin, Vadim; Mari, Federico; Melatti, Igor; Salvo, Ivano; Tronci, Enrico

2012-01-01

Many Embedded Systems are indeed Software Based Control Systems (SBCSs), that is control systems whose controller consists of control software running on a microcontroller device. This motivates investigation on Formal Model Based Design approaches for control software. Given the formal model of a plant as a Discrete Time Linear Hybrid System and the implementation specifications (that is, number of bits in the Analog-to-Digital (AD) conversion) correct-by-construction control software can be...

Unit Testing for the Application Control Language (ACL) Software

Science.gov (United States)

Heinich, Christina Marie

2014-01-01

In the software development process, code needs to be tested before it can be packaged for release in order to make sure the program actually does what it says is supposed to happen as well as to check how the program deals with errors and edge cases (such as negative or very large numbers). One of the major parts of the testing process is unit testing, where you test specific units of the code to make sure each individual part of the code works. This project is about unit testing many different components of the ACL software and fixing any errors encountered. To do this, mocks of other objects need to be created and every line of code needs to be exercised to make sure every case is accounted for. Mocks are important to make because it gives direct control of the environment the unit lives in instead of attempting to work with the entire program. This makes it easier to achieve the second goal of exercising every line of code.

DOOCS patterns, reusable software components for FPGA based RF GUN field controller

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Pucyk, P. [Institute of Electronic Systems, Warsaw (Poland)

2006-07-01

Modern accelerator technology combines software and hardware solutions to provide distributed, high efficiency digital systems for High Energy Physics experiments. Providing flexible, maintainable software is crucial for ensuring high availability of the whole system. In order to fulfil all these requirements, appropriate design and development techniques have to be used. Software patterns are well known solution for common programming issues, providing proven development paradigms, which can help to avoid many design issues. DOOCS patterns introduces new concepts of reusable software components for control system algorithms development and implementation in DOOCS framework. Chosen patterns have been described and usage examples have been presented in this paper. (orig.)

DOOCS patterns, reusable software components for FPGA based RF GUN field controller

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pucyk, P.

2006-01-01

Modern accelerator technology combines software and hardware solutions to provide distributed, high efficiency digital systems for High Energy Physics experiments. Providing flexible, maintainable software is crucial for ensuring high availability of the whole system. In order to fulfil all these requirements, appropriate design and development techniques have to be used. Software patterns are well known solution for common programming issues, providing proven development paradigms, which can help to avoid many design issues. DOOCS patterns introduces new concepts of reusable software components for control system algorithms development and implementation in DOOCS framework. Chosen patterns have been described and usage examples have been presented in this paper. (orig.)

Simulation of neutron multiplicity measurements using Geant4. Open source software for nuclear arms control

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kuett, Moritz

2016-07-07

Nuclear arms control, including nuclear safeguards and verification technologies for nuclear disarmament typically use software as part of many different technological applications. This thesis proposes to use three open source criteria for such software, allowing users and developers to have free access to a program, have access to the full source code and be able to publish modifications for the program. This proposition is presented and analyzed in detail, together with the description of the development of ''Open Neutron Multiplicity Simulation'', an open source software tool to simulate neutron multiplicity measurements. The description includes physical background of the method, details of the developed program and a comprehensive set of validation calculations.

Tailoring Software Inspections for Aspect-Oriented Programming

Science.gov (United States)

Watkins, Charlette Ward

2009-01-01

Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) is a new approach that addresses limitations inherent in conventional programming, especially the principle of separation of concerns by emphasizing the encapsulation and modularization of crosscutting concerns through a new abstraction, the "aspect." Aspect-oriented programming is an emerging AOSD…

Software product quality control

CERN Document Server

Wagner, Stefan

2013-01-01

Quality is not a fixed or universal property of software; it depends on the context and goals of its stakeholders. Hence, when you want to develop a high-quality software system, the first step must be a clear and precise specification of quality. Yet even if you get it right and complete, you can be sure that it will become invalid over time. So the only solution is continuous quality control: the steady and explicit evaluation of a product's properties with respect to its updated quality goals.This book guides you in setting up and running continuous quality control in your environment. Star

Effective Software Engineering Leadership for Development Programs

Science.gov (United States)

Cagle West, Marsha

2010-01-01

Software is a critical component of systems ranging from simple consumer appliances to complex health, nuclear, and flight control systems. The development of quality, reliable, and effective software solutions requires the incorporation of effective software engineering processes and leadership. Processes, approaches, and methodologies for…

Antenna Controller Replacement Software

Science.gov (United States)

Chao, Roger Y.; Morgan, Scott C.; Strain, Martha M.; Rockwell, Stephen T.; Shimizu, Kenneth J.; Tehrani, Barzia J.; Kwok, Jaclyn H.; Tuazon-Wong, Michelle; Valtier, Henry; Nalbandi, Reza;

Software trends for both the GANIL and spiral control

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

David, L.; Lecorche, E.

1999-01-01

The Ganil facility has been running with a new control system since 1993. Many improvements have been done since that time to bring new capabilities to the system. So, in February 1996, when the Spiral control system was designed, it was mainly considered as an extension of the Ganil control system. This paper briefly recalls the basic architecture of the whole control system and the main choices upon which it relies. Then it presents the new software trends, to show how the Spiral control system has been integrated alongside the existing one. The last part describe the new developments and the most significant functionalities it brings as seen from the operator point of view, with some emphasis about the application programs for beam tuning. Indeed, these new programs have to be provided both for the spiral tuning with exotic ions beams and for the coupling of the Spiral and older Ganil facilities. (authors)

Software Reviews. Programs Worth a Second Look.

Science.gov (United States)

Schneider, Roxanne; Eiser, Leslie

1989-01-01

Reviewed are three computer software packages for use in middle/high school classrooms. Included are "MacWrite II," a word-processing program for MacIntosh computers; "Super Story Tree," a word-processing program for Apple and IBM computers; and "Math Blaster Mystery," for IBM, Apple, and Tandy computers. (CW)

Modularity analysis of automotive control software

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dajsuren, Y.; Brand, van den M.G.J.; Serebrenik, A.

2013-01-01

A design language and tool like MATLAB/Simulink is used for the graphical modelling and simulation of automotive control software. As the functionality based on electronics and software systems increases in motor vehicles, it is becoming increasingly important for system/software architects and

Exploratory research for the development of a computer aided software design environment with the software technology program

Science.gov (United States)

Hardwick, Charles

1991-01-01

Field studies were conducted by MCC to determine areas of research of mutual interest to MCC and JSC. NASA personnel from the Information Systems Directorate and research faculty from UHCL/RICIS visited MCC in Austin, Texas to examine tools and applications under development in the MCC Software Technology Program. MCC personnel presented workshops in hypermedia, design knowledge capture, and design recovery on site at JSC for ISD personnel. The following programs were installed on workstations in the Software Technology Lab, NASA/JSC: (1) GERM (Graphic Entity Relations Modeler); (2) gIBIS (Graphic Issues Based Information System); and (3) DESIRE (Design Recovery tool). These applications were made available to NASA for inspection and evaluation. Programs developed in the MCC Software Technology Program run on the SUN workstation. The programs do not require special configuration, but they will require larger than usual amounts of disk space and RAM to operate properly.

Software quality assurance and software safety in the Biomed Control System

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Singh, R.P.; Chu, W.T.; Ludewigt, B.A.; Marks, K.M.; Nyman, M.A.; Renner, T.R.; Stradtner, R.

1989-01-01

The Biomed Control System is a hardware/software system used for the delivery, measurement and monitoring of heavy-ion beams in the patient treatment and biology experiment rooms in the Bevalac at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL). This paper describes some aspects of this system including historical background philosophy, configuration management, hardware features that facilitate software testing, software testing procedures, the release of new software quality assurance, safety and operator monitoring. 3 refs

Digital Controller Development Methodology Based on Real-Time Simulations with LabVIEW FPGA Hardware-Software Toolset

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tommaso Caldognetto

2013-12-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we exemplify the use of NI Lab-VIEW FPGA as a rapid prototyping environment for digital controllers. In our power electronics laboratory, it has been successfully employed in the development, debugging, and test of different power converter controllers for microgrid applications.The paper shows how this high level programming language,together with its target hardware platforms, including CompactRIO and Single Board RIO systems, allows researchers and students to develop even complex applications in reasonable times. The availability of efficient drivers for the considered hardware platforms frees the users from the burden of low level programming. At the same time, the high level programming approach facilitates software re-utilization, allowing the laboratory know-how to steadily grow along time. Furthermore, it allows hardware-in-the-loop real-time simulation, that proved to be effective, and safe, in debugging even complex hardware and software co-designed controllers. To illustrate the effectiveness of these hardware-software toolsets and of the methodology based upon them, two case studies are

New GPIB Control Software at Jefferson Lab

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Matthew Bickley; Pavel Chevtsov

2005-01-01

The control of GPIB devices at Jefferson Lab is based on the GPIB device/driver library. The library is a part of the device/driver development framework. It is activated with the use of the device configuration files that define all hardware components used in the control system to communicate with GPIB devices. As soon as the software is activated, it is ready to handle any device connected to these components and only needs to know the set of commands that the device can understand. The old GPIB control software at Jefferson Lab requires the definition of these commands in the form of a device control software module written in C for each device. Though such modules are relatively simple, they have to be created, successfully compiled, and supported for all control computer platforms. In the new version of GPIB control software all device communication commands are defined in device protocol (ASCII text) files. This makes the support of GPIB devices in the control system much easier

Open core control software for surgical robots.

Science.gov (United States)

Arata, Jumpei; Kozuka, Hiroaki; Kim, Hyung Wook; Takesue, Naoyuki; Vladimirov, B; Sakaguchi, Masamichi; Tokuda, Junichi; Hata, Nobuhiko; Chinzei, Kiyoyuki; Fujimoto, Hideo

2010-05-01

In these days, patients and doctors in operation room are surrounded by many medical devices as resulting from recent advancement of medical technology. However, these cutting-edge medical devices are working independently and not collaborating with each other, even though the collaborations between these devices such as navigation systems and medical imaging devices are becoming very important for accomplishing complex surgical tasks (such as a tumor removal procedure while checking the tumor location in neurosurgery). On the other hand, several surgical robots have been commercialized, and are becoming common. However, these surgical robots are not open for collaborations with external medical devices in these days. A cutting-edge "intelligent surgical robot" will be possible in collaborating with surgical robots, various kinds of sensors, navigation system and so on. On the other hand, most of the academic software developments for surgical robots are "home-made" in their research institutions and not open to the public. Therefore, open source control software for surgical robots can be beneficial in this field. From these perspectives, we developed Open Core Control software for surgical robots to overcome these challenges. In general, control softwares have hardware dependencies based on actuators, sensors and various kinds of internal devices. Therefore, these control softwares cannot be used on different types of robots without modifications. However, the structure of the Open Core Control software can be reused for various types of robots by abstracting hardware dependent parts. In addition, network connectivity is crucial for collaboration between advanced medical devices. The OpenIGTLink is adopted in Interface class which plays a role to communicate with external medical devices. At the same time, it is essential to maintain the stable operation within the asynchronous data transactions through network. In the Open Core Control software, several

Advanced transport operating system software upgrade: Flight management/flight controls software description

Science.gov (United States)

Clinedinst, Winston C.; Debure, Kelly R.; Dickson, Richard W.; Heaphy, William J.; Parks, Mark A.; Slominski, Christopher J.; Wolverton, David A.

1988-01-01

The Flight Management/Flight Controls (FM/FC) software for the Norden 2 (PDP-11/70M) computer installed on the NASA 737 aircraft is described. The software computes the navigation position estimates, guidance commands, those commands to be issued to the control surfaces to direct the aircraft in flight based on the modes selected on the Advanced Guidance Control System (AGSC) mode panel, and the flight path selected via the Navigation Control/Display Unit (NCDU).

Overview of MFTF supervisory control and diagnostics system software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ng, W.C.

1979-01-01

The Mirror Fusion Test Facility (MFTF) at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (LLL) is currently the largest mirror fusion research project in the world. Its Control and Diagnostics System is handled by a distributed computer network consisting of nine Interdata minicomputer systems and about 65 microprocessors. One of the design requirements is tolerance of single-point failure. If one of the computer systems becomes inoperative, the experiment can still be carried out, although the system responsiveness to operator command may be degraded. In a normal experiment cycle, the researcher can examine the result of the previous experiment, change any control parameter, fire a shot, collect four million bytes of diagnostics data, perform intershot analysis, and have the result presented - all within five minutes. The software approach adopted for the Supervisory Control and Diagnostics System features chief programmer teams and structured programming. Pascal is the standard programming language in this project

49 CFR 236.18 - Software management control plan.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 49 Transportation 4 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Software management control plan. 236.18 Section... Instructions: All Systems General § 236.18 Software management control plan. (a) Within 6 months of June 6, 2005, each railroad shall develop and adopt a software management control plan for its signal and train...

Nuclear power plant monitoring and control system software: verification and validation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kaneda, M.; Niki, K.; Shibata, K.

1986-01-01

The design philosophy, configuration, and production of process computer system software used for the monitoring and control of nuclear power plants are presented in detail. To achieve a very complex software system that not only has excellent performance, high reliability, and full fail safe protection, but also is easy to produce, verify, and validate, and has flexibility for future modifications, we developed the following software production system to support safe operation of nuclear power stations. The fundamental design philosophy of our monitoring and control system software is the complete separation of program logic from the data base. The logic section is highly standardized and applicable to a wide range of power generation plant computer application systems. The plant-unique properties and characteristics are all described in the data base. This separation of logic and data base has a dramatic effect on the reliability and productivity of the software system. One of the main features of the data base system is the use of easy-to-learn, easy-to-use, problem-oriented language that enables non-programmers to build up the data base using simple fill-in-the-blank type tables. The generation of these tables is fully automated, and the full set of online table editing utility software, which runs on the target plant process computer, has proven very effective in incorporation of changes and modifications at the site. (author)

Architecture of the software for LAMOST fiber positioning subsystem

Science.gov (United States)

Peng, Xiaobo; Xing, Xiaozheng; Hu, Hongzhuan; Zhai, Chao; Li, Weimin

2004-09-01

The architecture of the software which controls the LAMOST fiber positioning sub-system is described. The software is composed of two parts as follows: a main control program in a computer and a unit controller program in a MCS51 single chip microcomputer ROM. And the function of the software includes: Client/Server model establishment, observation planning, collision handling, data transmission, pulse generation, CCD control, image capture and processing, and data analysis etc. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which different parts of the software can communicate. Also software techniques for multi threads, SOCKET programming, Microsoft Windows message response, and serial communications are discussed.

Lean and Efficient Software: Whole Program Optimization of Executables

Science.gov (United States)

2016-12-31

19b. TELEPHONE NUMBER (Include area code) 12/31/2016 Final Technical Report (Phase I - Base Period) 30-06-2014 - 31-12-2016 Lean and Efficient...Software: Whole-Program Optimization of Executables Final Report Evan Driscoll Tom Johnson GrammaTech, Inc. 531 Esty Street Ithaca, NY 14850 Office of...hardening U U U UU 30 Tom Johnson (607) 273-7340 x.134 Page 1 of 30 “ Lean and Efficient Software: Whole-Program Optimization of Executables

Programming language concepts for software developers

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sestoft, Peter

2008-01-01

This note describes and motivates our current plans for an undergraduate course on programming language concepts for software development students. We describe the competences we expect students to acquire as well as the topics covered by the course. We plan to use C# and Scheme as instruction...

Controls Over Operating System and Security Software Supporting the Defense Finance and Accounting Service

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

1993-01-01

... programs from one another. Security software provides access controls that restrict the use of computer resources to authorized individuals and limit those individuals to the computer resources required to perform their jobs...

Cognitive programs: Software for attention's executive

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

John K Tsotsos

2014-11-01

Full Text Available What are the computational tasks that an executive controller for visual attention must solve? This question is posed in the context of the Selective Tuning model of attention. The range of required computations go beyond top-down bias signals or region-of-interest determinations, and must deal with overt and covert fixations, process timing and synchronization, information routing, memory, matching control to task, spatial localization, priming, and coordination of bottom-up with top-down information. During task execution, results must be monitored to ensure the expected results. This description includes the kinds of elements that are common in the control of any kind of complex machine or system. We seek a mechanistic integration of the above, in other words, algorithms that accomplish control. Such algorithms operate on representations, transforming a representation of one kind into another, which then forms the input to yet another algorithm. Cognitive Programs (CPs are hypothesized to capture exactly such representational transformations via stepwise sequences of operations. CPs, an updated and modernized offspring of Ullman's Visual Routines, impose an algorithmic structure to the set of attentional functions and play a role in the overall shaping of attentional modulation of the visual system so that it provides its best performance. This requires that we consider the visual system as a dynamic, yet general-purpose processor tuned to the task and input of the moment. This differs dramatically from the almost universal cognitive and computational views, which regard vision as a passively observing module to which simple questions about percepts can be posed, regardless of task. Differing from Visual Routines, CPs explicitly involve the critical elements of Visual Task Executive, Visual Attention Executive, and Visual Working Memory. Cognitive Programs provide the software that directs the actions of the Selective Tuning model of visual

Real-time Kernel Implementation Practice Program for Embedded Software Engineers' Education and its Evaluation

Science.gov (United States)

Yoshida, Toshio; Matsumoto, Masahide; Seo, Katsuhiko; Chino, Shinichiro; Sugino, Eiji; Sawamoto, Jun; Koizumi, Hisao

A real-time kernel (henceforth RTK) is in the center place of embedded software technology, and the understanding of RTK is indispensable for the embedded system design. To implement RTK, it is necessary to understand languages that describe RTK software program code, system programming manners, software development tools, CPU on that RTK runs and the interface between software and hardware, etc. in addition to understanding of RTK itself. This means RTK implementation process largely covers embedded software implementation process. Therefore, it is thought that RTK implementation practice program is very effective as a means of the acquisition of common embedded software skill in addition to deeper acquisition of RTK itself. In this paper, we propose to apply RTK implementing practice program to embedded software engineers educational program. We newly developed very small and step-up type RTK named μK for educational use, and held a seminar that used μK as a teaching material for the students of information science and engineers of the software house. As a result, we confirmed that RTK implementation practice program is very effective for the acquisition of embedded software common skill.

Software technology for power control

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kakizoe, Hiroyuki; Suganuma, Isao; Yamaguchi, Shiu; Yasuda, Takashi

1987-04-27

High reliability, high-speed computing processing at the time of trouble, and easy data maintenance are required for a power control system. Design concept, materializing methods, tools and practical applications of the system software are presented. To enhance maintenability, structures and simulation functions, etc. were developed. To meet the requirement for high speed processing, systems for high speed filing and queueing, and a service subsystem were developed. To automate the overall system, a dual system was established by AIP subsystems to improve reliability. Discs can be protected by the dual system. A fallback system was employed which will separate a troubled portion to enable the continuous operation of the total system. Error logging and performance analysis tools were also developed. Data maintenance feature and application simulation programs were also developed to help operators easily modify the facilities data. (9 figs)

Introducing Software Engineering by means of Extreme Programming

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hedin, G.; Bendix, Lars Gotfred; Magnusson, B.

2003-01-01

This paper reports on experience from teaching basic software engineering concepts by using Extreme Programming in a second year undergraduate course taken by 107 students. We describe how this course fits into a wider programme on software engineering and technology and report our experience from...... running and improving the course. Particularly important aspects of our set-up includes team coaching (by older students) and "team-in-one-room". Our experience so far is very positive and we see that students get a good basic understanding of the important concepts in software engineering, rooted...

Scheduling and control of programs in the CICADA computer system for TFTR

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Christianson, G.B.; Sherrick, M.; Stark, W.

1983-01-01

The CICADA computer system is a network of super minicomputers for data acquisition, reduction, display and device control on the TFTR experiment. Human interaction with the CICADA system is accomplished by consoles offering color displays with a high degree of operator interaction with the computer system, and by interactive terminals offering a limited degree of operator interaction. The authors describe the software packages and data bases used to control the consoles and provide communication to an application program attached to a console. The console control program in its turn schedules the execution of control programs that furnish operating system interfaces to applications programs executing at a console or terminal (in response to human activation), or upon activation by scheduling tasks. The control programs handle functions such as applications task activation. They discuss the implementation of the control programs in the multi-computer CICADA environment, and describe the control program data bases. In a TFTR shot cycle, applications programs must be scheduled for activation at operator-defined stages, in order to accomplish the arming of hardware devices, acquisition of summary waveform data, and the acquisition and archiving of raw data. The authors describe the software tasks and data bases of the CICADA event system, which accomplishes this scheduling of applications task activation in conjunction with the control programs. Future enhancements planned for the console control, program control, and event systems are outlined

Machine Tool Software

Science.gov (United States)

1988-01-01

A NASA-developed software package has played a part in technical education of students who major in Mechanical Engineering Technology at William Rainey Harper College. Professor Hack has been using (APT) Automatically Programmed Tool Software since 1969 in his CAD/CAM Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing curriculum. Professor Hack teaches the use of APT programming languages for control of metal cutting machines. Machine tool instructions are geometry definitions written in APT Language to constitute a "part program." The part program is processed by the machine tool. CAD/CAM students go from writing a program to cutting steel in the course of a semester.

Portability scenarios for intelligent robotic control agent software

Science.gov (United States)

Straub, Jeremy

2014-06-01

Portability scenarios are critical in ensuring that a piece of AI control software will run effectively across the collection of craft that it is required to control. This paper presents scenarios for control software that is designed to control multiple craft with heterogeneous movement and functional characteristics. For each prospective target-craft type, its capabilities, mission function, location, communications capabilities and power profile are presented and performance characteristics are reviewed. This work will inform future work related to decision making related to software capabilities, hardware control capabilities and processing requirements.

Framework for Small-Scale Experiments in Software Engineering: Guidance and Control Software Project: Software Engineering Case Study

Science.gov (United States)

Hayhurst, Kelly J.

1998-01-01

Software is becoming increasingly significant in today's critical avionics systems. To achieve safe, reliable software, government regulatory agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Department of Defense mandate the use of certain software development methods. However, little scientific evidence exists to show a correlation between software development methods and product quality. Given this lack of evidence, a series of experiments has been conducted to understand why and how software fails. The Guidance and Control Software (GCS) project is the latest in this series. The GCS project is a case study of the Requirements and Technical Concepts for Aviation RTCA/DO-178B guidelines, Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification. All civil transport airframe and equipment vendors are expected to comply with these guidelines in building systems to be certified by the FAA for use in commercial aircraft. For the case study, two implementations of a guidance and control application were developed to comply with the DO-178B guidelines for Level A (critical) software. The development included the requirements, design, coding, verification, configuration management, and quality assurance processes. This paper discusses the details of the GCS project and presents the results of the case study.

Managing Complexity of Control Software through Concurrency

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hilderink, G.H.

2005-01-01

In this thesis, we are concerned with the development of concurrent software for embedded systems. The emphasis is on the development of control software. Embedded systems are concurrent systems whereby hardware and software communicate with the concurrent world. Concurrency is essential, which

Program Helps Design Tests Of Developmental Software

Science.gov (United States)

Hops, Jonathan

1994-01-01

Computer program called "A Formal Test Representation Language and Tool for Functional Test Designs" (TRL) provides automatic software tool and formal language used to implement category-partition method and produce specification of test cases in testing phase of development of software. Category-partition method useful in defining input, outputs, and purpose of test-design phase of development and combines benefits of choosing normal cases having error-exposing properties. Traceability maintained quite easily by creating test design for each objective in test plan. Effort to transform test cases into procedures simplified by use of automatic software tool to create cases based on test design. Method enables rapid elimination of undesired test cases from consideration and facilitates review of test designs by peer groups. Written in C language.

A NEW CONTROL CIRCUIT AND COMPUTER SOFTWARE FOR CONTROLING PHOTOVOLTAIC SYSTEMS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mustafa Berkant SELEK

2008-02-01

Full Text Available In this study, a new microcontroller circuit was designed and new computer software was implemented to control power flow currents of renewable energy system, which is established in Solar Energy Institute, Ege University, Bornova, Izmir, Turkey. PIC18F452 microcontroller based electronic circuit was designed to control another electronic circuit that includes power electronic switching components. Readily available standard control circuits are designed for switching single level inverters. In contrary, implemented circuit allows to switch multilevel inverters. In addition, because the efficiency of solar energy panels is considerably low, solar panels should be operated under the maximum power point (MPP. Therefore, MPP algorithm is included in the designed control circuit. Next, the control circuit also includes a serial communication interface based on RS232 standard. Using this interface enables the user to choose all functions available in the control circuit and take status report via computer software. Last, a general purpose command set was designed to establish communication between the computer software and the microcontroller-based control circuit. As a result, it is aimed that this study supply a basis for the researchers who want to develop own control circuits or more visual software.

Programs for control of an analog-signal switching network

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

D'Ottavio, T.; Enriquez, R.; Katz, R.; Skelly, J.

1989-01-01

A suite of programs has been developed to control the network of analog-signal switching multiplexers in the AGS complex. The software is driven by a relational database which describes the architecture of the multiplexer tree and the set of available analog signals. Signals are routed through a three-layer multiplexer tree, to be made available at four consoles each with three 4-trace oscilloscopes. A menu-structured operator interface program is available at each console, to accept requests to route any available analog signal to any of that console's 12 oscilloscope traces. A common routing-server program provides automatic routing-server program provides automatic routing of requested signals through the layers of multiplexers, maintaining a reservation database to denote free and in-use trunks. Expansion of the analog signal system is easily accommodated in software by adding new signals, trunks, multiplexers, or consoles to the database. Programmatic control of the triggering signals for each of the oscilloscopes is also provided. 3 refs., 4 figs., 3 tabs

Automated Cryocooler Monitor and Control System Software

Science.gov (United States)

Britchcliffe, Michael J.; Conroy, Bruce L.; Anderson, Paul E.; Wilson, Ahmad

2011-01-01

This software is used in an automated cryogenic control system developed to monitor and control the operation of small-scale cryocoolers. The system was designed to automate the cryogenically cooled low-noise amplifier system described in "Automated Cryocooler Monitor and Control System" (NPO-47246), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 35, No. 5 (May 2011), page 7a. The software contains algorithms necessary to convert non-linear output voltages from the cryogenic diode-type thermometers and vacuum pressure and helium pressure sensors, to temperature and pressure units. The control function algorithms use the monitor data to control the cooler power, vacuum solenoid, vacuum pump, and electrical warm-up heaters. The control algorithms are based on a rule-based system that activates the required device based on the operating mode. The external interface is Web-based. It acts as a Web server, providing pages for monitor, control, and configuration. No client software from the external user is required.

Software to implement the IAEA-TECDOC 1517: quality control in mammography

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Mora Rodriguez, Patricia

2011-01-01

Mammography quality control is presented; also, guidelines for establishing a quality control program through tests to be performed, equipment, frequencies and tolerances. The work is intended for radiologists, medical physicists and technologists. Also examples of data collection sheets, minimum equipment list and overview of a quality control program are included. Two projects (RLA/9/057 and RLA/9/067) raised the goal of developing a software that allows a simple and effective way to automate the evidence contained in the TECDOC. The V1 is presented in the IRPA 12 (2008), which was tested in some countries to detect problems in their use and include possible improvements. However, the final revised version for distribution in member countries was get in 2010. The way of work on the project is described and who has worked. Also, a complete program, its importance and the projection of the Universidad de Costa Rica to work with the same. (author) [es

Heart and liver T2* assessment for iron overload using different software programs

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Fernandes, Juliano L. [University of Campinas, Unicamp, Campinas (Brazil); Radiologia Clinica de Campinas, Campinas (Brazil); Cardiology, Department of Internal Medicine, Campinas, SP (Brazil); Sampaio, Erika Fontana; Coelho, Otavio R. [University of Campinas, Unicamp, Campinas (Brazil); Verissimo, Monica; Pereira, Fabricio B. [Centro Infantil Boldrini, Campinas (Brazil); Silva, Jose Alvaro da; Figueiredo, Gabriel S. de; Kalaf, Jose M. [Radiologia Clinica de Campinas, Campinas (Brazil)

2011-12-15

To assess the level of agreement and interchangeability among different software programs for calculation of T2* values for iron overload. T2* images were analysed in 60 patients with thalassaemia major using the truncation method in three software programs. Levels of agreement were assessed using Pearson correlation and Bland-Altman plots. Categorical classification for levels of iron concentration by each software program was also compared. For the heart, all correlation coefficients were significant among the software programs (P < 0.001 for all coefficients). The mean differences and 95% limits of agreement were 0.2 (-4.73 to 5.0); 0.1 (-4.0 to 3.9); and -0.1 (-4.3 to 4.8). For the liver all correlations were also significant with P < 0.001. Bland-Altman plots showed differences of -0.02 (-0.7 to 0.6); 0.01 (-0.4 to 0.4); and -0.02 (-0.6 to 0.6). There were no significant differences in clinical classification among the software programs. All tools used in this study provided very good agreement among heart and liver T2* values. The results indicate that interpretation of T2* data is interchangeable with any of the software programs tested. (orig.)

Software engineering the current practice

CERN Document Server

Rajlich, Vaclav

2011-01-01

INTRODUCTION History of Software EngineeringSoftware PropertiesOrigins of SoftwareBirth of Software EngineeringThird Paradigm: Iterative ApproachSoftware Life Span ModelsStaged ModelVariants of Staged ModelSoftware Technologies Programming Languages and CompilersObject-Oriented TechnologyVersion Control SystemSoftware ModelsClass DiagramsUML Activity DiagramsClass Dependency Graphs and ContractsSOFTWARE CHANGEIntroduction to Software ChangeCharacteristics of Software ChangePhases of Software ChangeRequirements and Their ElicitationRequirements Analysis and Change InitiationConcepts and Concept

Application range affected by software failures in safety relevant instrumentation and control systems of nuclear power plants

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jopen, Manuela; Mbonjo, Herve; Sommer, Dagmar; Ulrich, Birte

2017-03-01

This report presents results that have been developed within a BMUB-funded research project (Promotion Code 3614R01304). The overall objective of this project was to broaden the knowledge base of GRS regarding software failures and their impact in software-based instrumentation and control (I and C) systems. To this end, relevant definitions and terms in standards and publications (DIN, IEEE standards, IAEA standards, NUREG publications) as well as in the German safety requirements for nuclear power plants were analyzed first. In particular, it was found that the term ''software fault'' is defined differently and partly contradictory in the considered literature sources. For this reason, a definition of software fault was developed on the basis of the software life cycle of software-based I and C systems within the framework of this project, which takes into account the various aspects relevant to software faults and their related effects. It turns out that software failures result from latent faults in a software-based control system, which can lead to a non-compliant behavior of a software-based I and C system. Hereby a distinction should be made between programming faults and specification faults. In a further step, operational experience with software failures in software-based I and C systems in nuclear facilities and in nonnuclear sector was investigated. The identified events were analyzed with regard to their cause and impacts and the analysis results were summarized. Based on the developed definition of software failure and on the COMPSIS-classification scheme for events related to software based I and C systems, the COCS-classification scheme was developed to classify events from operating experience with software failures, in which the events are classified according to the criteria ''cause'', ''affected system'', ''impact'' and ''CCF potential''. This classification scheme was applied to evaluate the events identified in the framework of this project

SU-E-T-103: Development and Implementation of Web Based Quality Control Software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Studinski, R; Taylor, R; Angers, C; La Russa, D; Clark, B

2014-01-01

Purpose: Historically many radiation medicine programs have maintained their Quality Control (QC) test results in paper records or Microsoft Excel worksheets. Both these approaches represent significant logistical challenges, and are not predisposed to data review and approval. It has been our group's aim to develop and implement web based software designed not just to record and store QC data in a centralized database, but to provide scheduling and data review tools to help manage a radiation therapy clinics Equipment Quality control program. Methods: The software was written in the Python programming language using the Django web framework. In order to promote collaboration and validation from other centres the code was made open source and is freely available to the public via an online source code repository. The code was written to provide a common user interface for data entry, formalize the review and approval process, and offer automated data trending and process control analysis of test results. Results: As of February 2014, our installation of QAtrack+ has 180 tests defined in its database and has collected ∼22 000 test results, all of which have been reviewed and approved by a physicist via QATrack+'s review tools. These results include records for quality control of Elekta accelerators, CT simulators, our brachytherapy programme, TomoTherapy and Cyberknife units. Currently at least 5 other centres are known to be running QAtrack+ clinically, forming the start of an international user community. Conclusion: QAtrack+ has proven to be an effective tool for collecting radiation therapy QC data, allowing for rapid review and trending of data for a wide variety of treatment units. As free and open source software, all source code, documentation and a bug tracker are available to the public at https://bitbucket.org/tohccmedphys/qatrackplus/

SU-E-T-103: Development and Implementation of Web Based Quality Control Software

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Studinski, R; Taylor, R; Angers, C; La Russa, D; Clark, B [The Ottawa Hospital Regional Cancer Ctr., Ottawa, ON (Canada)

2014-06-01

Purpose: Historically many radiation medicine programs have maintained their Quality Control (QC) test results in paper records or Microsoft Excel worksheets. Both these approaches represent significant logistical challenges, and are not predisposed to data review and approval. It has been our group's aim to develop and implement web based software designed not just to record and store QC data in a centralized database, but to provide scheduling and data review tools to help manage a radiation therapy clinics Equipment Quality control program. Methods: The software was written in the Python programming language using the Django web framework. In order to promote collaboration and validation from other centres the code was made open source and is freely available to the public via an online source code repository. The code was written to provide a common user interface for data entry, formalize the review and approval process, and offer automated data trending and process control analysis of test results. Results: As of February 2014, our installation of QAtrack+ has 180 tests defined in its database and has collected ∼22 000 test results, all of which have been reviewed and approved by a physicist via QATrack+'s review tools. These results include records for quality control of Elekta accelerators, CT simulators, our brachytherapy programme, TomoTherapy and Cyberknife units. Currently at least 5 other centres are known to be running QAtrack+ clinically, forming the start of an international user community. Conclusion: QAtrack+ has proven to be an effective tool for collecting radiation therapy QC data, allowing for rapid review and trending of data for a wide variety of treatment units. As free and open source software, all source code, documentation and a bug tracker are available to the public at https://bitbucket.org/tohccmedphys/qatrackplus/.

Statistical Software and Artificial Intelligence: A Watershed in Applications Programming.

Science.gov (United States)

Pickett, John C.

1984-01-01

AUTOBJ and AUTOBOX are revolutionary software programs which contain the first application of artificial intelligence to statistical procedures used in analysis of time series data. The artificial intelligence included in the programs and program features are discussed. (JN)

Guidance and Control Software Project Data - Volume 1: Planning Documents

Science.gov (United States)

Hayhurst, Kelly J. (Editor)

2008-01-01

The Guidance and Control Software (GCS) project was the last in a series of software reliability studies conducted at Langley Research Center between 1977 and 1994. The technical results of the GCS project were recorded after the experiment was completed. Some of the support documentation produced as part of the experiment, however, is serving an unexpected role far beyond its original project context. Some of the software used as part of the GCS project was developed to conform to the RTCA/DO-178B software standard, "Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification," used in the civil aviation industry. That standard requires extensive documentation throughout the software development life cycle, including plans, software requirements, design and source code, verification cases and results, and configuration management and quality control data. The project documentation that includes this information is open for public scrutiny without the legal or safety implications associated with comparable data from an avionics manufacturer. This public availability has afforded an opportunity to use the GCS project documents for DO-178B training. This report provides a brief overview of the GCS project, describes the 4-volume set of documents and the role they are playing in training, and includes the planning documents from the GCS project. Volume 1 contains five appendices: A. Plan for Software Aspects of Certification for the Guidance and Control Software Project; B. Software Development Standards for the Guidance and Control Software Project; C. Software Verification Plan for the Guidance and Control Software Project; D. Software Configuration Management Plan for the Guidance and Control Software Project; and E. Software Quality Assurance Activities.

Software for Embedded Control Systems

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Broenink, Johannes F.; Hilderink, G.H.; Jovanovic, D.S.

2001-01-01

The research of our team deals with the realization of control schemes on digital computers. As such the emphasis is on embedded control software implementation. Applications are in the field of mechatronic devices, using a mechatronic design approach (the integrated and optimal design of a

Design and Implementation of Modular Software for Programming Mobile Robots

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alessandro Farinelli

2006-03-01

Full Text Available This article describes a software development toolkit for programming mobile robots, that has been used on different platforms and for different robotic applications. We address design choices, implementation issues and results in the realization of our robot programming environment, that has been devised and built from many people since 1998. We believe that the proposed framework is extremely useful not only for experienced robotic software developers, but also for students approaching robotic research projects.

TCV software test and validation tools and technique. [Terminal Configured Vehicle program for commercial transport aircraft operation

Science.gov (United States)

Straeter, T. A.; Williams, J. R.

1976-01-01

The paper describes techniques for testing and validating software for the TCV (Terminal Configured Vehicle) program which is intended to solve problems associated with operating a commercial transport aircraft in the terminal area. The TCV research test bed is a Boeing 737 specially configured with digital computer systems to carry out automatic navigation, guidance, flight controls, and electronic displays research. The techniques developed for time and cost reduction include automatic documentation aids, an automatic software configuration, and an all software generation and validation system.

Specialized software for optimization of the quality control of the mammography units

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Stoeva, M.; Vassileva, J.

2004-01-01

Quality control is essential to ensure the equipment used is reliable and consistent in order to maintain radiation does as low as reasonably achievable whilst optimizing image quality and performance in mammography. The effectiveness of mammographic screening is highly dependent on the consistent production of high quality diagnostic images. Mammography is highly dependent on the equipment status, which requires an effective Quality Control (QC) program to provide tools for continuous assessment of the equipment performance and also data storage and analysis of the protocols' data. The objective of this paper is to present the specialized software for Quality Control of the Mammography Units, as tool providing additional functionality for optimizations of the Mammography QC data storage and management. The PC program was developed according to the requirements stated in the European protocol for Quality Control of the Mammography Screening and the data collected as a result of its application in several Bulgarian hospitals. The Structured Analysis method was used in order to perform a case, which resulted in the development of the specialized software with a database module, providing the following functionality: Data Storage, Preliminary Data Processing and Post-Processing, Manual Data Entry, Data Import from XLS format, Data Export to XLS format, Printing, Data Filters, Automated Calculation, Automated Graphical Representation, Archiving The development of specialized QC software with a database for mammography units facilitates the process of QC data storage and handling and minimizes the errors. The electronic format for data storage is especially useful in case of long-term storage and periodical data analysis/access. The integrated data processing functionality and the automated import/export features based on standard platform increase the compatibility of the data. (authors)

Report of Investigation Committee on Programs for Research and Development of Strategic Software for Advanced Computing; Kodo computing yo senryakuteki software no kenkyu kaihatsu program kento iinkai hokokusho

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

2000-12-26

The committee met on December 26, 2000, with 32 people in attendance. Discussion was made on the results of surveys conducted for the development of strategic software for advanced computing and on candidate projects for strategic software development. Taken up at the meeting were eight subjects which were the interim report on the survey results, semiconductor TCAD (technology computer-aided design) system, nanodevice surface analysis system, network distribution parallel processing platform (tentative name), fatigue simulation system, chemical reaction simulator, protein structure analysis system, and a next-generation fluid analysis system. In this report, the author uses his own way in arranging the discussion results into the four categories of (1) a strategic software development system, (2) popularization method and maintenance system, (3) handling of the results, and (4) the evaluation of the program for research and development. In relation to category (1), it is stated that the software grows up with the passage of time, that the software is a commercial program, and that in the development of a commercial software program the process of basic study up to the preparation of a prototype should be completely separated from the process for its completion. (NEDO)

Software quality assurance plan for GCS

Science.gov (United States)

Duncan, Stephen E.; Bailey, Elizabeth K.

1990-01-01

The software quality assurance (SQA) function for the Guidance and Control Software (GCS) project which is part of a software error studies research program is described. The SQA plan outlines all of the procedures, controls, and audits to be carried out by the SQA organization to ensure adherence to the policies, procedures, and standards for the GCS project.

Distributed control software of high-performance control-loop algorithm

CERN Document Server

Blanc, D

1999-01-01

The majority of industrial cooling and ventilation plants require the control of complex processes. All these processes are highly important for the operation of the machines. The stability and reliability of these processes are leading factors identifying the quality of the service provided. The control system architecture and software structure, as well, are required to have high dynamical performance and robust behaviour. The intelligent systems based on PID or RST controllers are used for their high level of stability and accuracy. The design and tuning of these complex controllers require the dynamic model of the plant to be known (generally obtained by identification) and the desired performance of the various control loops to be specified for achieving good performances. The concept of having a distributed control algorithm software provides full automation facilities with well-adapted functionality and good performances, giving methodology, means and tools to master the dynamic process optimization an...

Packaging of control system software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zagar, K.; Kobal, M.; Saje, N.; Zagar, A.; Sabjan, R.; Di Maio, F.; Stepanov, D.

2012-01-01

Control system software consists of several parts - the core of the control system, drivers for integration of devices, configuration for user interfaces, alarm system, etc. Once the software is developed and configured, it must be installed to computers where it runs. Usually, it is installed on an operating system whose services it needs, and also in some cases dynamically links with the libraries it provides. Operating system can be quite complex itself - for example, a typical Linux distribution consists of several thousand packages. To manage this complexity, we have decided to rely on Red Hat Package Management system (RPM) to package control system software, and also ensure it is properly installed (i.e., that dependencies are also installed, and that scripts are run after installation if any additional actions need to be performed). As dozens of RPM packages need to be prepared, we are reducing the amount of effort and improving consistency between packages through a Maven-based infrastructure that assists in packaging (e.g., automated generation of RPM SPEC files, including automated identification of dependencies). So far, we have used it to package EPICS, Control System Studio (CSS) and several device drivers. We perform extensive testing on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5, but we have also verified that packaging works on CentOS and Scientific Linux. In this article, we describe in greater detail the systematic system of packaging we are using, and its particular application for the ITER CODAC Core System. (authors)

Guidance and Control Software Project Data - Volume 3: Verification Documents

Science.gov (United States)

Hayhurst, Kelly J. (Editor)

2008-01-01

The Guidance and Control Software (GCS) project was the last in a series of software reliability studies conducted at Langley Research Center between 1977 and 1994. The technical results of the GCS project were recorded after the experiment was completed. Some of the support documentation produced as part of the experiment, however, is serving an unexpected role far beyond its original project context. Some of the software used as part of the GCS project was developed to conform to the RTCA/DO-178B software standard, "Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification," used in the civil aviation industry. That standard requires extensive documentation throughout the software development life cycle, including plans, software requirements, design and source code, verification cases and results, and configuration management and quality control data. The project documentation that includes this information is open for public scrutiny without the legal or safety implications associated with comparable data from an avionics manufacturer. This public availability has afforded an opportunity to use the GCS project documents for DO-178B training. This report provides a brief overview of the GCS project, describes the 4-volume set of documents and the role they are playing in training, and includes the verification documents from the GCS project. Volume 3 contains four appendices: A. Software Verification Cases and Procedures for the Guidance and Control Software Project; B. Software Verification Results for the Pluto Implementation of the Guidance and Control Software; C. Review Records for the Pluto Implementation of the Guidance and Control Software; and D. Test Results Logs for the Pluto Implementation of the Guidance and Control Software.

Developing Learning Tool of Control System Engineering Using Matrix Laboratory Software Oriented on Industrial Needs

Science.gov (United States)

Isnur Haryudo, Subuh; Imam Agung, Achmad; Firmansyah, Rifqi

2018-04-01

The purpose of this research is to develop learning media of control technique using Matrix Laboratory software with industry requirement approach. Learning media serves as a tool for creating a better and effective teaching and learning situation because it can accelerate the learning process in order to enhance the quality of learning. Control Techniques using Matrix Laboratory software can enlarge the interest and attention of students, with real experience and can grow independent attitude. This research design refers to the use of research and development (R & D) methods that have been modified by multi-disciplinary team-based researchers. This research used Computer based learning method consisting of computer and Matrix Laboratory software which was integrated with props. Matrix Laboratory has the ability to visualize the theory and analysis of the Control System which is an integration of computing, visualization and programming which is easy to use. The result of this instructional media development is to use mathematical equations using Matrix Laboratory software on control system application with DC motor plant and PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative). Considering that manufacturing in the field of Distributed Control systems (DCSs), Programmable Controllers (PLCs), and Microcontrollers (MCUs) use PID systems in production processes are widely used in industry.

Effective Development and Verification of Railway Control Software

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Haxthausen, Anne Elisabeth

2011-01-01

This document presents a method for effective development of software for a product line of similar railway control systems. The software is constructed in three steps: first a specifications in a domain-specific language is created, then a formal behavioural controller model is automatically...

A software architecture for a transportation control tower

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Baumgrass, A.; Dijkman, R.M.; Grefen, P.W.P.J.; Pourmirza, S.; Völzer, H.; Weske, M.H.

2014-01-01

A Transportation Control Tower is a software application that facilitates transportation planners with easily monitoring and dispatching transportation resources. This paper presents a software architecture for such an application. It focuses in particular on the novel aspects of the software

New Control Software of the 188cm Telescope of Okayama Astrophysical Observatory

Science.gov (United States)

Yoshida, Michitoshi; Shimizu, Yasuhiro; Watanabe, Etsuji; Yanagisawa, Kenshi; Uraguchi, Fumihiro

2002-12-01

We developed the telescope control software for the 188cm telescope of Okayama Astrophysical Observatory (OAO) based on Java technology. Basically, the software consists of two processes running on separate Java virtual machines; one of which is the "Command Dispatcher (CD)" and the other is the "User Interface (UI)". Among the two, CD is the main engine/server of the telescope control, whereas UI is just a client. The "standard" UI we provide is a graphical user interface written in Java/Swing. CD communicates with the local control units (LCUs) of the telescope through RS232C. CD is a Java multi-thread program, in which a number of threads run simultaneously. The threads running in CD are the follows: UNIX socket servers for external communications, socket opener for on-demand open/close of a socket port, socket client manager, auto-guider and dome watcher, internal command dispatcher, status manager, status collector, RS232C writer and reader, logger, and control units. The above "control units" are software models ("objects") of the telescope system. We introduced four control units- "Telescope", "Dome", "Weather-Monitor", and "Pointing"- for telescope control. The first three units are simple software models of the real-worlds devices. The last one, "Pointing", is a unit which abstracts pointing procedure of the telescope. CD and UI communicate with each other using UNIX socket. The command protocol of this communication is fairly simple, and observation instruments, auto guider, or additional UI for remote observation are also able to communicate with CD through socket using this protocol. CD opens and closes socket ports for communication on demand according to the request of client process (UI, instruments etc.), so that any clients can be connected to CD dynamically.

Object-Oriented Programming When Developing Software in Geology and Geophysics

Science.gov (United States)

Ahmadulin, R. K.; Bakanovskaya, L. N.

2017-01-01

The paper reviews the role of object-oriented programming when developing software in geology and geophysics. Main stages have been identified at which it is worthwhile to apply principles of object-oriented programming when developing software in geology and geophysics. The research was based on a number of problems solved in Geology and Petroleum Production Institute. Distinctive features of these problems are given and areas of application of the object-oriented approach are identified. Developing applications in the sphere of geology and geophysics has shown that the process of creating such products is simplified due to the use of object-oriented programming, firstly when designing structures for data storage and graphical user interfaces.

Software to study the control strategy of pressurized water reactor

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Oliveira, Jose Ricardo de

2002-01-01

The computational program, result of this work, is a tool developed for the study of the control of Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) constituted by only one coolant loop. The implementation of a user friendly interface for input/output data, makes the program also suitable for training and teaching applications. As design premise, it was considered enough just the modeling of the primary circuit, using as interface with the secondary circuit, a simplified differential equation of the temperature associated with the secondary power. All the incorporated dynamic equations to the model were developed using basic laws of conservation, boundary conditions and hypotheses appropriated to the control study. To arrive to the final model, core thermal and hydraulic characteristics and design data were obtained from of the available bibliography and adapted for a conceptual peculiar design of a small PWR. The whole program and all input/output interfaces were developed using the software Matlab, version 5.L Sub-routines of numeric integration based on the Runge-Kutta 4 method were applied, to solve the set of ordinary differential equations. (author)

The contribution of instrumentation and control software to system reliability

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fryer, M.O.

1984-01-01

Advanced instrumentation and control systems are usually implemented using computers that monitor the instrumentation and issue commands to control elements. The control commands are based on instrument readings and software control logic. The reliability of the total system will be affected by the software design. When comparing software designs, an evaluation of how each design can contribute to the reliability of the system is desirable. Unfortunately, the science of reliability assessment of combined hardware and software systems is in its infancy. Reliability assessment of combined hardware/software systems is often based on over-simplified assumptions about software behavior. A new method of reliability assessment of combined software/hardware systems is presented. The method is based on a procedure called fault tree analysis which determines how component failures can contribute to system failure. Fault tree analysis is a well developed method for reliability assessment of hardware systems and produces quantitative estimates of failure probability based on component failure rates. It is shown how software control logic can be mapped into a fault tree that depicts both software and hardware contributions to system failure. The new method is important because it provides a way for quantitatively evaluating the reliability contribution of software designs. In many applications, this can help guide designers in producing safer and more reliable systems. An application to the nuclear power research industry is discussed

Cross software for microprocessor program development at CERN

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Eicken, H. von; Montuelle, J.; Willers, I.; Blake, J.

1981-01-01

Programs for a variety of microprocessors (including Intel 8080; Motorola 6800 and 6809 and 68000; and Texas Instruments 9900) can be prepared on different host computers (such as IBM 370, CDC 6000, and Nord 10) using portable programs developed at CERN. The range of cross software consists of: an assembler for each target microprocessor, a single linkage editor, a single object module librarian, and a variety of pre-loaders which convert object modules from CERN's format (CUFOM) into manufacturers' formats. The programs are written in BCPL and PASCAL, programming languages which are available on a wide range of computers. (orig.)

Geologic software for nuclear waste repository studies: A quality assurance program

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Figuli, S.; English, S.L.

1987-04-01

This paper discusses a Quality Assurance (QA) program that Kent State University (KSU) has implemented for the development of geologic software. The software being developed at KSU will be used in the site characterization of nuclear waste repositories and must meet the requirements of federal regulations. This QA program addresses the development of models that will be used in the evaluation of the long-term climatic stability of three sites in the western US

Software Engineering Education at Carnegie Mellon University: One University; Programs Taught in Two Places

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ray Bareiss

2009-10-01

Full Text Available Teaching Software Engineering to professional master‟s students is a challenging endeavor, and arguably for the past 20 years, Carnegie Mellon University has been quite successful. Although CMU teaches Software Engineering at sites world-wide and uses different pedagogies, the goal of the curriculum -- to produce world-class software engineers -- remains constant. This paper will discuss two of the most mature versions of Carnegie Mellon‟s Software Engineering program -- the main campus program and its "daughter program" at the Silicon Valley Campus. We discuss the programs with respect to the dimensions of curriculum, how students work and learn, how faculty teach, curricular materials, and how students are assessed to provide insight into how Carnegie Mellon continues to keep its programs fresh, to adapt them to local needs, and to meet its goal of excellence after 20 years.

Apollo experience report: Guidance and control systems. Engineering simulation program

Science.gov (United States)

Gilbert, D. W.

1973-01-01

The Apollo Program experience from early 1962 to July 1969 with respect to the engineering-simulation support and the problems encountered is summarized in this report. Engineering simulation in support of the Apollo guidance and control system is discussed in terms of design analysis and verification, certification of hardware in closed-loop operation, verification of hardware/software compatibility, and verification of both software and procedures for each mission. The magnitude, time, and cost of the engineering simulations are described with respect to hardware availability, NASA and contractor facilities (for verification of the command module, the lunar module, and the primary guidance, navigation, and control system), and scheduling and planning considerations. Recommendations are made regarding implementation of similar, large-scale simulations for future programs.

The effects of exercise reminder software program on office workers' perceived pain level, work performance and quality of life.

Science.gov (United States)

Irmak, A; Bumin, G; Irmak, R

2012-01-01

In direct proportion to current technological developments, both the computer usage in the workplaces is increased and requirement of leaving the desk for an office worker in order to photocopy a document, send or receive an e-mail is decreased. Therefore, office workers stay in the same postures accompanied by long periods of keyboard usage. In recent years, with intent to reduce the incidence of work related musculoskeletal disorders several exercise reminder software programs have been developed. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the exercise reminder software program on office workers' perceived pain level, work performance and quality of life. 39 healthy office workers accepted to attend the study. Participants were randomly split in to two groups, control group (n = 19) and intervention group (n = 20). Visual Analogue Scale to evaluate the perceived pain was administered all of the participants in the beginning and at the end of the study. The intervention group used the program for 10 weeks. Findings showed that the control group VAS scores remained the same, but the intervention group VAS scores decreased in a statistically significant way (p software programs may help to reduce perceived pain among office workers. Further long term studies with more subjects are needed to describe the effects of these programs and the mechanism under these effects.

Software architecture considerations for ion source control systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sinclair, J.W.

1997-09-01

General characteristics of distributed control system software tools are examined from the perspective of ion source control system requirements. Emphasis is placed on strategies for building extensible, distributed systems in which the ion source element is one component of a larger system. Vsystem, a commercial software tool kit from Vista Control Systems was utilized extensively in the control system upgrade of the Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility. Part of the control system is described and the characteristics of Vsystem are examined and compared with those of EPICS, the Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Acceptance test report MICON software exhaust fan control

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Keck, R.D.

1998-01-01

This test procedure specifies instructions for acceptance testing of software for exhaust fan control under Project ESPT (Energy Savings Performance Contract). The software controls the operation of two emergency exhaust fans when there is a power failure. This report details the results of acceptance testing for the MICON software upgrades. One of the modifications is that only one of the emergency fans will operate at all times. If the operating fan shuts off or fails, the other fan will start and the operating fan will be stopped

Software requirements specification for the program analysis and control system risk management module

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

SCHAEFER, J.C.

1999-01-01

TWR Program Analysis and Control System Risk Module is used to facilitate specific data processes surrounding the Risk Management program of the Tank Waste Retrieval environment. This document contains the Risk Management system requirements of the database system

Software reliability models for critical applications

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Pham, H.; Pham, M.

1991-12-01

This report presents the results of the first phase of the ongoing EG&G Idaho, Inc. Software Reliability Research Program. The program is studying the existing software reliability models and proposes a state-of-the-art software reliability model that is relevant to the nuclear reactor control environment. This report consists of three parts: (1) summaries of the literature review of existing software reliability and fault tolerant software reliability models and their related issues, (2) proposed technique for software reliability enhancement, and (3) general discussion and future research. The development of this proposed state-of-the-art software reliability model will be performed in the second place. 407 refs., 4 figs., 2 tabs.

Software reliability models for critical applications

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Pham, H.; Pham, M.

1991-12-01

This report presents the results of the first phase of the ongoing EG G Idaho, Inc. Software Reliability Research Program. The program is studying the existing software reliability models and proposes a state-of-the-art software reliability model that is relevant to the nuclear reactor control environment. This report consists of three parts: (1) summaries of the literature review of existing software reliability and fault tolerant software reliability models and their related issues, (2) proposed technique for software reliability enhancement, and (3) general discussion and future research. The development of this proposed state-of-the-art software reliability model will be performed in the second place. 407 refs., 4 figs., 2 tabs.

Guidance and Control Software Project Data - Volume 2: Development Documents

Science.gov (United States)

Hayhurst, Kelly J. (Editor)

2008-01-01

The Guidance and Control Software (GCS) project was the last in a series of software reliability studies conducted at Langley Research Center between 1977 and 1994. The technical results of the GCS project were recorded after the experiment was completed. Some of the support documentation produced as part of the experiment, however, is serving an unexpected role far beyond its original project context. Some of the software used as part of the GCS project was developed to conform to the RTCA/DO-178B software standard, "Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification," used in the civil aviation industry. That standard requires extensive documentation throughout the software development life cycle, including plans, software requirements, design and source code, verification cases and results, and configuration management and quality control data. The project documentation that includes this information is open for public scrutiny without the legal or safety implications associated with comparable data from an avionics manufacturer. This public availability has afforded an opportunity to use the GCS project documents for DO-178B training. This report provides a brief overview of the GCS project, describes the 4-volume set of documents and the role they are playing in training, and includes the development documents from the GCS project. Volume 2 contains three appendices: A. Guidance and Control Software Development Specification; B. Design Description for the Pluto Implementation of the Guidance and Control Software; and C. Source Code for the Pluto Implementation of the Guidance and Control Software

Software change control in the Sizewell B ISCO

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Johnson, A.

1997-01-01

Central to the control and instrumentation system of the Sizewell B nuclear power plant is a control, data acquisition and control system based on a distributed network of several hundred microprocessors. The system has been integrated into a single functional unity, and software modifications affecting one part of it have an effect on the other parts. The software modification and configuration processes are therefore kept as similar as possible. (A.K.)

Data acquisition and control using National Instruments' ''LabVIEW'' software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kirkman, I.W.; Buksh, P.A.

1992-01-01

Using conventional programming techniques for the production of data acquisition and control software can be a time-consuming procedure, and the code subsequently produced can often be inflexible and rather difficult to modify in the light of changing experimental requirements. A new generation of commercial software products have recently appeared which it is claimed can significantly reduce development times and give rise to more flexible code and improved user interfaces. An example of such a product is National Instruments' ''LabVIEW,'' which presents a novel graphical approach based on Apple Macintosh computer platforms. Extensive use of LabVIEW has been made by the Soft X-ray Group at Daresbury Laboratory over the past two years, and its performance is reported on here. Several examples of experimental arrangements for which it has been used are described, and an evaluation of the product is made

Klystron control software in the SLC

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jobe, R.K.; Thompson, K.; Phinney, N.

1985-05-01

Triggering, control, and monitoring of 240 high-power klystrons will be supported by the SLC control system this summer. The control software is distributed among a VAX host computer, a local microprocessor cluster, and a dedicated intelligent CAMAC module. The functions performed by these three components and the algorithms used are discussed

A tool to include gamma analysis software into a quality assurance program.

Science.gov (United States)

Agnew, Christina E; McGarry, Conor K

2016-03-01

To provide a tool to enable gamma analysis software algorithms to be included in a quality assurance (QA) program. Four image sets were created comprising two geometric images to independently test the distance to agreement (DTA) and dose difference (DD) elements of the gamma algorithm, a clinical step and shoot IMRT field and a clinical VMAT arc. The images were analysed using global and local gamma analysis with 2 in-house and 8 commercially available software encompassing 15 software versions. The effect of image resolution on gamma pass rates was also investigated. All but one software accurately calculated the gamma passing rate for the geometric images. Variation in global gamma passing rates of 1% at 3%/3mm and over 2% at 1%/1mm was measured between software and software versions with analysis of appropriately sampled images. This study provides a suite of test images and the gamma pass rates achieved for a selection of commercially available software. This image suite will enable validation of gamma analysis software within a QA program and provide a frame of reference by which to compare results reported in the literature from various manufacturers and software versions. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

Automation of program model developing for complex structure control objects

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ivanov, A.P.; Sizova, T.B.; Mikhejkina, N.D.; Sankovskij, G.A.; Tyufyagin, A.N.

1991-01-01

A brief description of software for automated developing the models of integrating modular programming system, program module generator and program module library providing thermal-hydraulic calcualtion of process dynamics in power unit equipment components and on-line control system operation simulation is given. Technical recommendations for model development are based on experience in creation of concrete models of NPP power units. 8 refs., 1 tab., 4 figs

A Parallel Controls Software Approach for PEP II: AIDA and Matlab Middle Layer

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wittmer, W.; Colocho, W.; White, G.

2007-01-01

The controls software in use at PEP II (Stanford Control Program - SCP) had originally been developed in the eighties. It is very successful in routine operation but due to its internal structure it is difficult and time consuming to extend its functionality. This is problematic during machine development and when solving operational issues. Routinely, data has to be exported from the system, analyzed offline, and calculated settings have to be reimported. Since this is a manual process, it is time consuming and error-prone. Setting up automated processes, as is done for MIA (Model Independent Analysis), is also time consuming and specific to each application. Recently, there has been a trend at light sources to use MATLAB as the platform to control accelerators using a 'MATLAB Middle Layer' (MML), and so called channel access (CA) programs to communicate with the low level control system (LLCS). This has proven very successful, especially during machine development time and trouble shooting. A special CA code, named AIDA (Accelerator Independent Data Access), was developed to handle the communication between MATLAB, modern software frameworks, and the SCP. The MML had to be adapted for implementation at PEP II. Colliders differ significantly in their designs compared to light sources, which poses a challenge. PEP II is the first collider at which this implementation is being done. We will report on this effort, which is still ongoing

The COMPASS Tokamak Plasma Control Software Performance

Science.gov (United States)

Valcarcel, Daniel F.; Neto, André; Carvalho, Ivo S.; Carvalho, Bernardo B.; Fernandes, Horácio; Sousa, Jorge; Janky, Filip; Havlicek, Josef; Beno, Radek; Horacek, Jan; Hron, Martin; Panek, Radomir

2011-08-01

The COMPASS tokamak has began operation at the IPP Prague in December 2008. A new control system has been built using an ATCA-based real-time system developed at IST Lisbon. The control software is implemented on top of the MARTe real-time framework attaining control cycles as short as 50 μs, with a jitter of less than 1 μs. The controlled parameters, important for the plasma performance, are the plasma current, position of the plasma current center, boundary shape and horizontal and vertical velocities. These are divided in two control cycles: slow at 500 μs and fast at 50 μs. The project has two phases. First, the software implements a digital controller, similar to the analog one used during the COMPASS-D operation in Culham. In the slow cycle, the plasma current and position are measured and controlled with PID and feedforward controllers, respectively, the shaping magnetic field is preprogrammed. The vertical instability and horizontal equilibrium are controlled with the faster 50-μs cycle PID controllers. The second phase will implement a plasma-shape reconstruction algorithm and controller, aiming at optimized plasma performance. The system was designed to be as modular as possible by breaking the functional requirements of the control system into several independent and specialized modules. This splitting enabled tuning the execution of each system part and to use the modules in a variety of applications with different time constraints. This paper presents the design and overall performance of the COMPASS control software.

Creating and Testing Simulation Software

Science.gov (United States)

Heinich, Christina M.

2013-01-01

The goal of this project is to learn about the software development process, specifically the process to test and fix components of the software. The paper will cover the techniques of testing code, and the benefits of using one style of testing over another. It will also discuss the overall software design and development lifecycle, and how code testing plays an integral role in it. Coding is notorious for always needing to be debugged due to coding errors or faulty program design. Writing tests either before or during program creation that cover all aspects of the code provide a relatively easy way to locate and fix errors, which will in turn decrease the necessity to fix a program after it is released for common use. The backdrop for this paper is the Spaceport Command and Control System (SCCS) Simulation Computer Software Configuration Item (CSCI), a project whose goal is to simulate a launch using simulated models of the ground systems and the connections between them and the control room. The simulations will be used for training and to ensure that all possible outcomes and complications are prepared for before the actual launch day. The code being tested is the Programmable Logic Controller Interface (PLCIF) code, the component responsible for transferring the information from the models to the model Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), basic computers that are used for very simple tasks.

NASA software documentation standard software engineering program

Science.gov (United States)

1991-01-01

The NASA Software Documentation Standard (hereinafter referred to as Standard) can be applied to the documentation of all NASA software. This Standard is limited to documentation format and content requirements. It does not mandate specific management, engineering, or assurance standards or techniques. This Standard defines the format and content of documentation for software acquisition, development, and sustaining engineering. Format requirements address where information shall be recorded and content requirements address what information shall be recorded. This Standard provides a framework to allow consistency of documentation across NASA and visibility into the completeness of project documentation. This basic framework consists of four major sections (or volumes). The Management Plan contains all planning and business aspects of a software project, including engineering and assurance planning. The Product Specification contains all technical engineering information, including software requirements and design. The Assurance and Test Procedures contains all technical assurance information, including Test, Quality Assurance (QA), and Verification and Validation (V&V). The Management, Engineering, and Assurance Reports is the library and/or listing of all project reports.

Repository-based software engineering program: Concept document

Science.gov (United States)

1992-01-01

This document provides the context for Repository-Based Software Engineering's (RBSE's) evolving functional and operational product requirements, and it is the parent document for development of detailed technical and management plans. When furnished, requirements documents will serve as the governing RBSE product specification. The RBSE Program Management Plan will define resources, schedules, and technical and organizational approaches to fulfilling the goals and objectives of this concept. The purpose of this document is to provide a concise overview of RBSE, describe the rationale for the RBSE Program, and define a clear, common vision for RBSE team members and customers. The document also provides the foundation for developing RBSE user and system requirements and a corresponding Program Management Plan. The concept is used to express the program mission to RBSE users and managers and to provide an exhibit for community review.

Measurement of the area of venous ulcers using two software programs 1

Science.gov (United States)

Eberhardt, Thaís Dresch; de Lima, Suzinara Beatriz Soares; Lopes, Luis Felipe Dias; Borges, Eline de Lima; Weiller, Teresinha Heck; da Fonseca, Graziele Gorete Portella

2016-01-01

ABSTRACT Objective: to compare the measurement area of venous ulcers using AutoCAD(r) and Image Tool software. Method: this was an assessment of reproducibility tests conducted in a angiology clinic of a university hospital. Data were collected from 21 patients with venous ulcers, in the period from March to July of 2015, using a collection form and photograph of wounds. Five nurses (evaluators) of the hospital skin wound study group participated. The wounds were measured using both software programs. Data were analyzed using intraclass correlation coefficient, concordance correlation coefficient and Bland-Altman analysis. The study met the ethical aspects in accordance with current legislation. Results: the size of ulcers varied widely, however, without significant difference between the measurements; an excellent intraclass and concordance correlation was found between both software programs, which seem to be more accurate when measuring a wound area >10 cm². Conclusion: the use of both software programs is appropriate for measurement of venous ulcers, appearing to be more accurate when used to measure a wound area > 10 cm². PMID:27992028

Software process improvement: controlling developers, managers or users?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nørbjerg, Jacob

1999-01-01

The paper discusses how the latest trend in the management of software development: software process improvement (SPI) may affect user-developer relations. At the outset, SPI concerns the "internal workings" of software organisations, but it may also be interpreted as one way to give the developer...... organisation more control over the development process and the relations with the user organization....

RTSPM: real-time Linux control software for scanning probe microscopy.

Science.gov (United States)

Chandrasekhar, V; Mehta, M M

2013-01-01

Real time computer control is an essential feature of scanning probe microscopes, which have become important tools for the characterization and investigation of nanometer scale samples. Most commercial (and some open-source) scanning probe data acquisition software uses digital signal processors to handle the real time data processing and control, which adds to the expense and complexity of the control software. We describe here scan control software that uses a single computer and a data acquisition card to acquire scan data. The computer runs an open-source real time Linux kernel, which permits fast acquisition and control while maintaining a responsive graphical user interface. Images from a simulated tuning-fork based microscope as well as a standard topographical sample are also presented, showing some of the capabilities of the software.

Development of in-plant real-time materials control: the DYMAC program

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Augustson, R.H.

1976-01-01

LASL is in the process of developing a dynamic materials control program, called DYMAC, to provide the technology for stringent real-time nuclear materials control. The DYMAC program combines hardware and software into four component subsystems: nondestructive assay (NDA), instrumentation, data acquisition, data base management, and real-time accountability. To demonstrate the feasibility of DYMAC, a working real-time materials control system will be installed at the new plutonium facility presently under construction at LASL. Program emphasis is on developing practical solutions to generic problems and communicating those solutions to other installations for use throughout the nuclear fuel cycle

Efficient radiologic reading environment by using an open-source macro program as connection software.

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Young Han

2012-01-01

The objectives are (1) to introduce an easy open-source macro program as connection software and (2) to illustrate the practical usages in radiologic reading environment by simulating the radiologic reading process. The simulation is a set of radiologic reading process to do a practical task in the radiologic reading room. The principal processes are: (1) to view radiologic images on the Picture Archiving and Communicating System (PACS), (2) to connect the HIS/EMR (Hospital Information System/Electronic Medical Record) system, (3) to make an automatic radiologic reporting system, and (4) to record and recall information of interesting cases. This simulation environment was designed by using open-source macro program as connection software. The simulation performed well on the Window-based PACS workstation. Radiologists practiced the steps of the simulation comfortably by utilizing the macro-powered radiologic environment. This macro program could automate several manual cumbersome steps in the radiologic reading process. This program successfully acts as connection software for the PACS software, EMR/HIS, spreadsheet, and other various input devices in the radiologic reading environment. A user-friendly efficient radiologic reading environment could be established by utilizing open-source macro program as connection software. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Efficient radiologic reading environment by using an open-source macro program as connection software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lee, Young Han

2012-01-01

Purpose: The objectives are (1) to introduce an easy open-source macro program as connection software and (2) to illustrate the practical usages in radiologic reading environment by simulating the radiologic reading process. Materials and methods: The simulation is a set of radiologic reading process to do a practical task in the radiologic reading room. The principal processes are: (1) to view radiologic images on the Picture Archiving and Communicating System (PACS), (2) to connect the HIS/EMR (Hospital Information System/Electronic Medical Record) system, (3) to make an automatic radiologic reporting system, and (4) to record and recall information of interesting cases. This simulation environment was designed by using open-source macro program as connection software. Results: The simulation performed well on the Window-based PACS workstation. Radiologists practiced the steps of the simulation comfortably by utilizing the macro-powered radiologic environment. This macro program could automate several manual cumbersome steps in the radiologic reading process. This program successfully acts as connection software for the PACS software, EMR/HIS, spreadsheet, and other various input devices in the radiologic reading environment. Conclusion: A user-friendly efficient radiologic reading environment could be established by utilizing open-source macro program as connection software.

Computer software.

Science.gov (United States)

Rosenthal, L E

1986-10-01

Software is the component in a computer system that permits the hardware to perform the various functions that a computer system is capable of doing. The history of software and its development can be traced to the early nineteenth century. All computer systems are designed to utilize the "stored program concept" as first developed by Charles Babbage in the 1850s. The concept was lost until the mid-1940s, when modern computers made their appearance. Today, because of the complex and myriad tasks that a computer system can perform, there has been a differentiation of types of software. There is software designed to perform specific business applications. There is software that controls the overall operation of a computer system. And there is software that is designed to carry out specialized tasks. Regardless of types, software is the most critical component of any computer system. Without it, all one has is a collection of circuits, transistors, and silicone chips.

A CONCEPT OF SOFTWARE SUPPORT OF LEARNING PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE AND TECHNOLOGIES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

V. Kruglyk

2013-03-01

Full Text Available A concept of software support of learning programming language and technologies is regarded in the article. Present systems of independent study of subjects, related to programming, are examined. Necessary components of a system of support learning programming languages and technologies, which is oriented on independent study, are considered.

Web page translating software program The Hon-yaku; Hon'yaku software 'The hon'yaku

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

2000-03-01

A translating software program The Hon-yaku (the translator) Internet V4.0 has been developed, which provides an optimum means to help those who have to perform English-Japanese and Japanese-English translation on the Internet in collecting information from abroad, e-mailing to other countries, and chatting (exchanging of messages or dialogues) with friends overseas. When the Shortcut Read function is used, the user is instantly provided with the gist of the page on the screen even if it is full of long sentences. The program, furthermore, is equipped with a function of translating documents prepared using the state-of-the-art XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and PDF (Portable Document Format) technologies. Another translation software program The Hon-yaku Office V2.0 has also been developed, which adds a translating function to Microsoft(reg sign) Office 2000. Using this program, translation is completed upon clicking on the translation button on a Word, Excel, or Power Point(reg sign) screen. A template etc. are also provided, which simplifies the preparation of business letters in English. (translated by NEDO)

Programming for the Newton software development with NewtonScript

CERN Document Server

McKeehan, Julie

1994-01-01

Programming for the Newton: Software Development with NewtonScript focuses on the processes, approaches, operations, and principles involved in software development with NewtonScript.The publication first elaborates on Newton application design, views on the Newton, and protos. Discussions focus on system protos, creating and using user protos, linking and naming templates, creating the views of WaiterHelper, Newton application designs, and life cycle of an application. The text then elaborates on the fundamentals of NewtonScript, inheritance in NewtonScript, and view system and messages. Topi

The Challenges of the "Software Support for Industrial Controls" Contract

CERN Document Server

Ninin, P

2000-01-01

ST division is currently specifying a 'Software Support for Industrial Controls' contract. The application of this contract and its success will require several changes in our habits for specifying, designing, and maintaining control systems. This paper summarizes some key concepts which should be respected in order to obtain maximum benefits from the future contract and to optimize the software activities in the division. The contract concerns the maintenance and development of the monitoring and control systems used for supervising CERN's technical infrastructure (electrical distribution, cooling water, air conditioning, safety, and access control). The systems concerned consist of computer and communication hardware and software, tailored to provide specific functionalities for the remote operation, command, and monitoring of equipment. All these systems use commercially available software and hardware such as SCADA, PLCs and associated drivers, controllers, fieldbuses, and networks. It is intended to cont...

Verification of operation of the actuator control system using the integration the B&R Automation Studio software with a virtual model of the actuator system

Science.gov (United States)

Herbuś, K.; Ociepka, P.

2017-08-01

In the work is analysed a sequential control system of a machine for separating and grouping work pieces for processing. Whereas, the area of the considered problem is related with verification of operation of an actuator system of an electro-pneumatic control system equipped with a PLC controller. Wherein to verification is subjected the way of operation of actuators in view of logic relationships assumed in the control system. The actuators of the considered control system were three drives of linear motion (pneumatic cylinders). And the logical structure of the system of operation of the control system is based on the signals flow graph. The tested logical structure of operation of the electro-pneumatic control system was implemented in the Automation Studio software of B&R company. This software is used to create programs for the PLC controllers. Next, in the FluidSIM software was created the model of the actuator system of the control system of a machine. To verify the created program for the PLC controller, simulating the operation of the created model, it was utilized the approach of integration these two programs using the tool for data exchange in the form of the OPC server.

Conceptual design for controller software of mechatronic systems

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Broenink, Johannes F.; Hilderink, G.H.; Bakkers, André; Bradshaw, Alan; Counsell, John

1998-01-01

The method and software tool presented here, aims at supporting the development of control software for mechatronic systems. Heterogeneous distributed embedded processors are considered as target hardware. Principles of the method are that the implementation process is a stepwise refinement from

Reducing the risk of failure: Software Quality assurance standards and methods

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Elphick, J.; Cope, H.

1992-01-01

An effective Software Quality Assurance (SQA) program provides an overall approach to software engineering and the establishment of proven methods for the production of reliable software. And, in the authors experience, the overall costs for the software life are diminished with the application of quality methods. In their experience, the issues for implementing quality standards and practices are many. This paper addresses those issues as well as the lessons learned from developing and implementing a number of software quality assurance programs. Their experience includes the development and implementation of their own NRC accepted SQA program and an SQA program for an engineering software developer, as well as developing SQA procedures, standards, and methods for utilities, medical and commercial clients. Some of the issues addressed in this paper are: setting goals and defining quality; applying the software life cycle; addressing organizational issues; providing flexibility and increasing productivity; producing effective documentation; maintaining quality records; Imposing software configuration management; conducting reviews, audits, and controls; verification and validation; and controlling software procurement

Development of a new control software package for Pakistan Research Reactor-2

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Qazi, M.K.

1993-05-01

The development of a new control software package for Pakistan Research Reactor-2 is presented. The software operates in different modes which comprises of surveillance, pre-operational self tests, operator, supervisor and robotic control. The control logic critically damp the system minimizing power overshoots. The software, handles multiple abnormal conditions, provides an elaborate access control and maintains startup/shutdown record. The report describes the functional details and covers the operational aspects of the new control software. (author)

Channel access: A software bus for the LAACS

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hill, J.O.

1990-01-01

The host processor for a code running within a distributed process control system is often predetermined by constraints built into the software architecture of the control system. Input/output (I/O) channels directly connected to the host processors are usually easier to access in software than channels on remote processors. It is often difficult to modernize selective parts of a control system's software while leaving the other parts unchanged. Likewise, software developed at one laboratory is often difficult to integrate into a control system developed at another laboratory. Software that runs in one machine or operating-system architecture is often unable to communicate with control-system software running on a different platform. For the Los Alamos Accelerator Control System (LAACS) we have attempted to address the above difficulties with a software communication facility which we call Channel Access. Channel Access provides a 'software bus' that allows programs to be connected through a network to I/O channels on real-time processors in a manner similar to the way in which hardware modules are integrated within a standardized hardware bus such as CAMAC or VME. We have already placed an operator interface on Channel Access and we are currently designing alarm, archiving and sequencing tools as well. Numerous application-specific programs use Channel Access. This paper describes the unique feature of this approach and its performance as an integral part of the Los Alamos Accelerator Control System. (orig.)

Development of tools for safety analysis of control software in advanced reactors

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Guarro, S.; Yau, M.; Motamed, M.

1996-04-01

Software based control systems have gained a pervasive presence in a wide variety of applications, including nuclear power plant control and protection systems which are within the oversight and licensing responsibility of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. While the cost effectiveness and flexibility of software based plant process control is widely recognized, it is very difficult to achieve and prove high levels of demonstrated dependability and safety assurance for the functions performed by process control software, due to the very flexibility and potential complexity of the software itself. The development of tools to model, analyze and test software design and implementations in the context of the system that the software is designed to control can greatly assist the task of providing higher levels of assurance than those obtainable by software testing alone. This report presents and discusses the development of the Dynamic Flowgraph Methodology (DFM) and its application in the dependability and assurance analysis of software-based control systems. The features of the methodology and full-scale examples of application to both generic process and nuclear power plant control systems are presented and discussed in detail. The features of a workstation software tool developed to assist users in the application of DFM are also described

Development of tools for safety analysis of control software in advanced reactors

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Guarro, S.; Yau, M.; Motamed, M. [Advanced Systems Concepts Associates, El Segundo, CA (United States)

1996-04-01

Software based control systems have gained a pervasive presence in a wide variety of applications, including nuclear power plant control and protection systems which are within the oversight and licensing responsibility of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. While the cost effectiveness and flexibility of software based plant process control is widely recognized, it is very difficult to achieve and prove high levels of demonstrated dependability and safety assurance for the functions performed by process control software, due to the very flexibility and potential complexity of the software itself. The development of tools to model, analyze and test software design and implementations in the context of the system that the software is designed to control can greatly assist the task of providing higher levels of assurance than those obtainable by software testing alone. This report presents and discusses the development of the Dynamic Flowgraph Methodology (DFM) and its application in the dependability and assurance analysis of software-based control systems. The features of the methodology and full-scale examples of application to both generic process and nuclear power plant control systems are presented and discussed in detail. The features of a workstation software tool developed to assist users in the application of DFM are also described.

Programming heterogeneous MPSoCs tool flows to close the software productivity gap

CERN Document Server

Castrillón Mazo, Jerónimo

2014-01-01

This book provides embedded software developers with techniques for programmingheterogeneous Multi-Processor Systems-on-Chip (MPSoCs), capable of executing multiple applications simultaneously. It describes a set of algorithms and methodologies to narrow the software productivity gap, as well as an in-depth description of the underlying problems and challenges of today’s programming practices. The authors present four different tool flows: A parallelism extraction flow for applications writtenusing the C programming language, a mapping and scheduling flow for parallel applications, a special mapping flow for baseband applications in the context of Software Defined Radio (SDR) and a final flow for analyzing multiple applications at design time. The tool flows are evaluated on Virtual Platforms (VPs), which mimic different characteristics of state-of-the-art heterogeneous MPSoCs.   • Provides a novel set of algorithms and methodologies for programming heterogeneous Multi-Processor Systems-on-Chip (MPSoCs)...

The development of digital oscilloscope control software in nuclear measurement

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pu Minghui; Tian Geng; Li Xianyou

2004-01-01

This essay presents the development of an all-purpose digital oscilloscope control software on Windows 95/98 OS. The background and method are discussed in detail, together with the function and characteristics of the software. With the use of this software, a single PC can control several digital oscilloscopes. Solution of main problems encountered in the development is also discussed. (authors)

A new development on measurement and control software of SANS BATAN spectrometer (SMARTer) in Serpong, Indonesia

Science.gov (United States)

Bharoto, Suparno, Nadi; Putra, Edy Giri Rachman

2015-04-01

In 2005, the main computer for data acquisition and control system of Small-angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) BATAN Spectrometer (SMARTer) was replaced since it halted to operate the spectrometer. According to this replacement, the new software for data acquisition and control system has been developed in-house. Visual Basic programming language is used in developing the software. In the last two years, many developments have been made both in the hardware and also the software to conduct the experiment is more effective and efficient. Lately, the previous motor controller card (ISA Card) was replaced with the programmable motor controller card (PCI Card) for driving one motor of position sensitive detector (PSD), eight motors of four collimators, and six motors of six pinhole discs. This new control system software makes all motors can be moved simultaneously, then it reduces significantly the consuming time of setting up the instrument before running the experiment. Along with that development, the new data acquisition software under MS Windows operating system is also developed to drive a beam stopper in X-Y directions as well as to read the equipment status such as position of the collimators and PSD, to acquire neutron counts on monitor and PSD detectors, and also to manage 12 samples position automatically. A timer object which is set in one second to read the equipment status via serial port of the computer (RS232C), and general purpose interface board (GPIB) for reading the total counts of each pixel of the PSD from histogram memory was used in this new software. The experiment result displayed in real time on the main window, and the data is saved in the special format for further data reduction and analysis. The new software has been implemented and performed for experiment using a preset count or preset time mode for absolute scattering intensity method.

A new development on measurement and control software of SANS BATAN spectrometer (SMARTer) in Serpong, Indonesia

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Bharoto,; Suparno, Nadi; Putra, Edy Giri Rachman [Center for Technology of Nuclear Industrial Materials, National Nuclear Energy Agency of Indonesia (BATAN) Kawasan Puspiptek Serpong, Tangerang 15314, Banten, Indonesia bharoto@batan.go.id (Indonesia)

2015-04-16

In 2005, the main computer for data acquisition and control system of Small-angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) BATAN Spectrometer (SMARTer) was replaced since it halted to operate the spectrometer. According to this replacement, the new software for data acquisition and control system has been developed in-house. Visual Basic programming language is used in developing the software. In the last two years, many developments have been made both in the hardware and also the software to conduct the experiment is more effective and efficient. Lately, the previous motor controller card (ISA Card) was replaced with the programmable motor controller card (PCI Card) for driving one motor of position sensitive detector (PSD), eight motors of four collimators, and six motors of six pinhole discs. This new control system software makes all motors can be moved simultaneously, then it reduces significantly the consuming time of setting up the instrument before running the experiment. Along with that development, the new data acquisition software under MS Windows operating system is also developed to drive a beam stopper in X-Y directions as well as to read the equipment status such as position of the collimators and PSD, to acquire neutron counts on monitor and PSD detectors, and also to manage 12 samples position automatically. A timer object which is set in one second to read the equipment status via serial port of the computer (RS232C), and general purpose interface board (GPIB) for reading the total counts of each pixel of the PSD from histogram memory was used in this new software. The experiment result displayed in real time on the main window, and the data is saved in the special format for further data reduction and analysis. The new software has been implemented and performed for experiment using a preset count or preset time mode for absolute scattering intensity method.

Development of the software dead time methodology for the 4πβ-γ software coincidence system analysis program

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Toledo, Fabio de; Brancaccio, Franco; Dias, Mauro da Silva

2009-01-01

The Laboratorio de Metrologia Nuclear - LMN, Nuclear Metrology Laboratory -, at IPEN-CNEN/SP, Sao Paulo, Brazil, developed a new Software Coincidence System (SCS) for 4πβ-γ radioisotope standardization. SCS is composed by the data acquisition hardware, for the coincidence data recording, and the coincidence data analysis program that performs the radioactive activity calculation for the target sample. Due to hardware intrinsic signal sampling characteristics, multiple undesired data recording occurs from a single saturated pulse. Also pulse pileup leads to bad data recording. As the beta counting rates are much greater than the gamma ones, due to the high 4π geometry beta detecting efficiencies, the beta counting significantly increases because of multiple pulse recordings, resulting in a respective increasing in the calculated activity value. In order to minimize such bad recordings effect, a software dead time value was introduced in the coincidence analysis program, under development at LMN, discarding multiple recordings, due to pulse pileup or saturation. This work presents the methodology developed to determine the optimal software dead time data value, for better accuracy results attaining, and discusses the results, pointing to software improvement possibilities. (author)

APT - NASA ENHANCED VERSION OF AUTOMATICALLY PROGRAMMED TOOL SOFTWARE - STAND-ALONE VERSION

Science.gov (United States)

Premo, D. A.

1994-01-01

The APT code is one of the most widely used software tools for complex numerically controlled (N/C) machining. APT is an acronym for Automatically Programmed Tools and is used to denote both a language and the computer software that processes that language. Development of the APT language and software system was begun over twenty years ago as a U. S. government sponsored industry and university research effort. APT is a "problem oriented" language that was developed for the explicit purpose of aiding the N/C machine tools. Machine-tool instructions and geometry definitions are written in the APT language to constitute a "part program." The APT part program is processed by the APT software to produce a cutter location (CL) file. This CL file may then be processed by user supplied post processors to convert the CL data into a form suitable for a particular N/C machine tool. This June, 1989 offering of the APT system represents an adaptation, with enhancements, of the public domain version of APT IV/SSX8 to the DEC VAX-11/780 for use by the Engineering Services Division of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Enhancements include the super pocket feature which allows concave and convex polygon shapes of up to 40 points including shapes that overlap, that leave islands of material within the pocket, and that have one or more arcs as part of the pocket boundary. Recent modifications to APT include a rework of the POCKET subroutine and correction of an error that prevented the use within a macro of a macro variable cutter move statement combined with macro variable double check surfaces. Former modifications included the expansion of array and buffer sizes to accommodate larger part programs, and the insertion of a few user friendly error messages. The APT system software on the DEC VAX-11/780 is organized into two separate programs: the load complex and the APT processor. The load complex handles the table initiation phase and is usually only run when changes to the

Software factory techniques applied to process control at CERN

CERN Document Server

Dutour, Mathias D

2008-01-01

The CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) requires constant monitoring and control of quantities of parameters to guarantee operational conditions. For this purpose, a methodology called UNICOS (UNIfied Industrial COntrols Systems) has been implemented to standardize the design of process control applications. To further accelerate the development of these applications, we migrated our existing UNICOS tooling suite toward a software factory in charge of assembling project, domain and technical information seamlessly into deployable PLC (Programmable logic Controller) - SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) systems. This software factory delivers consistently high quality by reducing human error and repetitive tasks, and adapts to user specifications in a cost-efficient way. Hence, this production tool is designed to encapsulate and hide the PLC and SCADA target platforms, enabling the experts to focus on the business model rather than specific syntaxes and grammars. Based on industry standard software, ...

Software architecture for control and data acquisition of linear plasma generator Magnum-PSI

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Groen, P.W.C.; Beveren, V. van; Broekema, A.; Busch, P.J.; Genuit, J.W.; Kaas, G.; Poelman, A.J.; Scholten, J.; Zeijlmans van Emmichoven, P.A.

2013-01-01

Highlights: ► An architecture based on a modular design. ► The design offers flexibility and extendability. ► The design covers the overall software architecture. ► It also covers its (sub)systems’ internal structure. -- Abstract: The FOM Institute DIFFER – Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research has completed the construction phase of Magnum-PSI, a magnetized, steady-state, large area, high-flux linear plasma beam generator to study plasma surface interactions under ITER divertor conditions. Magnum-PSI consists of several hardware subsystems, and a variety of diagnostic systems. The COntrol, Data Acquisition and Communication (CODAC) system integrates these subsystems and provides a complete interface for the Magnum-PSI users. Integrating it all, from the lowest hardware level of sensors and actuators, via the level of networked PLCs and computer systems, up to functions and classes in programming languages, demands a sound and modular software architecture, which is extendable and scalable for future changes. This paper describes this architecture, and the modular design of the software subsystems. The design is implemented in the CODAC system at the level of services and subsystems (the overall software architecture), as well as internally in the software subsystems

BNL multiparticle spectrometer software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Saulys, A.C.

1984-01-01

This paper discusses some solutions to problems common to the design, management and maintenance of a large high energy physics spectrometer software system. The experience of dealing with a large, complex program and the necessity of having the program controlled by various people at different levels of computer experience has led us to design a program control structure of mnemonic and self-explanatory nature. The use of this control language in both on-line and off-line operation of the program will be discussed. The solution of structuring a large program for modularity so that substantial changes to the program can be made easily for a wide variety of high energy physics experiments is discussed. Specialized tools for this type of large program management are also discussed

Implementation of a free software for quality control of IMRT

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chinillace, N.; Alonso, S.; Cortina, T.; Reinado, D.; Ricos, B.; Diaz, S.; Campayo, J. M.

2011-01-01

In this paper we focus on implementation and launch of software that allows us to compare quantitatively the two-dimensional dose distributions calculated and measured experimentally in IMRT treatment. The tool we are using to make this comparison is the free software DoseLab. This is a program written in MatLab and open source, thereby allowing in some cases adapt the program to the needs of each user. This program will be able to calculate the gamma function of these distributions, a parameter that simultaneously evaluates the difference in dose between two pixels of the image and the distance between them, giving us an objective and quantitative, allowing us to decide if both distributions are compatible or not.

Development of a software for a multi-processor system aimed at the on-line control of nuclear physics experiments

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Poggioli, Jean Renaud

1984-01-01

This research thesis reports the development of a software for an acquisition computer aimed at the on-line control of nuclear physics experiments. An original architecture, based on the assignment of a processor to each fundamental task, enables the implementation of a high performance system. In order to make the user free of programming constraints, the author developed a software for dynamic generation of acquisition and processing codes. These codes are created from a data base which is programmed by the user by using a language close to the physical reality. Procedures of interactive control of the experiment are thus simplified by displaying function menus on the operator terminal. The author evokes possible hardware improvements and possible extensions of the system [fr

12: Assuring the quality of critical software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jacky, J.; Kalet, I.

1987-01-01

The authors recommend quality assurance procedures for radiation therapy software. Software quality assurance deals with preventing, detecting and repairing programming errors. Error detection difficulties are most severe in computer-based control systems, for example therapy machine control systems, because it may be impossible for users to confirm correct operation while treatments are in progress, or to intervene if things go wrong. Software quality assurance techniques observed in other industries in which public safety is at risk are reviewed. In some of these industries software must be approved or certified before it can be used. Approval is subject to technical reviews and audits by experts other than the program authors. The main obstacles to adoption of these techniques in the radiation therapy field are costs, lack of familiarity and doubts regarding efficacy. 18 refs

Methods and characteristics of assembly language software testing

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wang Lingfang

2001-01-01

Single chip micro-controllers are widely implemented to the controlling and testing products in industrial controlling and national defence embedded controlling systems. The invalidation of the source programs could lead to the unreliability of the whole systems, even to cause fatal results. Therefore, software testing is the necessary measures to reduce the mistakes and to improve the quality of the software. In the paper, the development of the software testing is presented. The distinctions between the assembly language testing and those of the high level languages is introduced. And the essential flow and methods of software testing are discussed in detail

Software for microcircuit systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kunz, P.F.

1978-10-01

Modern Large Scale Integration (LSI) microcircuits are meant to be programed in order to control the function that they perform. The basics of microprograming and new microcircuits have already been discussed. In this course, the methods of developing software for these microcircuits are explored. This generally requires a package of support software in order to assemble the microprogram, and also some amount of support software to test the microprograms and to test the microprogramed circuit itself. 15 figures, 2 tables

Software factory techniques applied to Process Control at CERN

CERN Multimedia

Dutour, MD

2007-01-01

The CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) requires constant monitoring and control of quantities of parameters to guarantee operational conditions. For this purpose, a methodology called UNICOS (UNIfied Industrial COntrols Systems) has been implemented to standardize the design of process control applications. To further accelerate the development of these applications, we migrated our existing UNICOS tooling suite toward a software factory in charge of assembling project, domain and technical information seamlessly into deployable PLC (Programmable logic Controller) – SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) systems. This software factory delivers consistently high quality by reducing human error and repetitive tasks, and adapts to user specifications in a cost-efficient way. Hence, this production tool is designed to encapsulate and hide the PLC and SCADA target platforms, enabling the experts to focus on the business model rather than specific syntaxes and grammars. Based on industry standard software...

Using Cognitive Control in Software Defined Networking for Port Scan Detection

Science.gov (United States)

2017-07-01

ARL-TR-8059 ● July 2017 US Army Research Laboratory Using Cognitive Control in Software -Defined Networking for Port Scan...Cognitive Control in Software -Defined Networking for Port Scan Detection by Vinod K Mishra Computational and Information Sciences Directorate, ARL...Technical Report 3. DATES COVERED (From - To) 15 June–31 July 2016 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE Using Cognitive Control in Software -Defined Networking for

Towards a controlled vocabulary on software engineering education

Science.gov (United States)

Pizard, Sebastián; Vallespir, Diego

2017-11-01

Software engineering is the discipline that develops all the aspects of the production of software. Although there are guidelines about what topics to include in a software engineering curricula, it is usually unclear which are the best methods to teach them. In any science discipline the construction of a classification schema is a common approach to understand a thematic area. This study examines previous publications in software engineering education to obtain a first controlled vocabulary (a more formal definition of a classification schema) in the field. Publications from 1988 to 2014 were collected and processed using automatic clustering techniques and the outcomes were analysed manually. The result is an initial controlled vocabulary with a taxonomy form with 43 concepts that were identified as the most used in the research publications. We present the classification of the concepts in three facets: 'what to teach', 'how to teach' and 'where to teach' and the evolution of concepts over time.

The design of a real-time software system for the distributed control of power station plant

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Maples, G.C.

1980-01-01

As the application of computers to the control of generating plants widens, the problems of resourcing several individual projects over their life cycle can become formidable. This paper indicates the factors relevant to containing the resource requirements associated with software, and outlines the benefits of adopting a standard machine-independent software system which enables engineers rather than computer specialists to develop programs for specific projects. The design objectives which have led to the current development within C.E.G.B. of CUTLASS (Computer Users Technical Languages and Applications Software System) are then considered. CUTLASS is intended to be a standard software system applicable to the majority of future on-line computing projects in the area of generation and is appropriate to stand alone schemes or distributed schemes having a host/target configuration. The CUTLASS system software provides the necessary environment in which to develop, test, and run the applications software, the latter being created by the user by means of a set of engineer-orientated languages. The paper describes the various facilities within CUTALSS, i.e. those considered essential to meet the requirements of future process control applications. Concentrating on the system software relating to the executive functions, and the organisation of global data and communications within distributed systems. The salient features of the engineer-orientated language sets are also discussed. (auth)

BioRuby: bioinformatics software for the Ruby programming language.

Science.gov (United States)

Goto, Naohisa; Prins, Pjotr; Nakao, Mitsuteru; Bonnal, Raoul; Aerts, Jan; Katayama, Toshiaki

2010-10-15

The BioRuby software toolkit contains a comprehensive set of free development tools and libraries for bioinformatics and molecular biology, written in the Ruby programming language. BioRuby has components for sequence analysis, pathway analysis, protein modelling and phylogenetic analysis; it supports many widely used data formats and provides easy access to databases, external programs and public web services, including BLAST, KEGG, GenBank, MEDLINE and GO. BioRuby comes with a tutorial, documentation and an interactive environment, which can be used in the shell, and in the web browser. BioRuby is free and open source software, made available under the Ruby license. BioRuby runs on all platforms that support Ruby, including Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. And, with JRuby, BioRuby runs on the Java Virtual Machine. The source code is available from http://www.bioruby.org/. katayama@bioruby.org

Security System Software

Science.gov (United States)

1993-01-01

C Language Integration Production System (CLIPS), a NASA-developed expert systems program, has enabled a security systems manufacturer to design a new generation of hardware. C.CURESystem 1 Plus, manufactured by Software House, is a software based system that is used with a variety of access control hardware at installations around the world. Users can manage large amounts of information, solve unique security problems and control entry and time scheduling. CLIPS acts as an information management tool when accessed by C.CURESystem 1 Plus. It asks questions about the hardware and when given the answer, recommends possible quick solutions by non-expert persons.

Use of Software Programs as Zero Fill Help in Overcoming the Problem Around Hard Drive

OpenAIRE

Eko Prasetyo Nugroho; Fivtatianti Fivtatianti, Skom, MM

2003-01-01

Zero Fill, is a software tool programs that are designed for hard disk drive specially branded Quantum. This software is a tool programs that function to format the hard drive. Where is the type of format here is the first format or in other words the software to format the hard drive is working under conditions of low- level or commonly referred to as a low- level format. The advantages of this software is able to fix and remove all existing data within the disk, such as files...

Increasing software testability with standard access and control interfaces

Science.gov (United States)

Nikora, Allen P; Some, Raphael R.; Tamir, Yuval

2003-01-01

We describe an approach to improving the testability of complex software systems with software constructs modeled after the hardware JTAG bus, used to provide visibility and controlability in testing digital circuits.

The SCEC/UseIT Intern Program: Creating Open-Source Visualization Software Using Diverse Resources

Science.gov (United States)

Francoeur, H.; Callaghan, S.; Perry, S.; Jordan, T.

2004-12-01

The Southern California Earthquake Center undergraduate IT intern program (SCEC UseIT) conducts IT research to benefit collaborative earth science research. Through this program, interns have developed real-time, interactive, 3D visualization software using open-source tools. Dubbed LA3D, a distribution of this software is now in use by the seismic community. LA3D enables the user to interactively view Southern California datasets and models of importance to earthquake scientists, such as faults, earthquakes, fault blocks, digital elevation models, and seismic hazard maps. LA3D is now being extended to support visualizations anywhere on the planet. The new software, called SCEC-VIDEO (Virtual Interactive Display of Earth Objects), makes use of a modular, plugin-based software architecture which supports easy development and integration of new data sets. Currently SCEC-VIDEO is in beta testing, with a full open-source release slated for the future. Both LA3D and SCEC-VIDEO were developed using a wide variety of software technologies. These, which included relational databases, web services, software management technologies, and 3-D graphics in Java, were necessary to integrate the heterogeneous array of data sources which comprise our software. Currently the interns are working to integrate new technologies and larger data sets to increase software functionality and value. In addition, both LA3D and SCEC-VIDEO allow the user to script and create movies. Thus program interns with computer science backgrounds have been writing software while interns with other interests, such as cinema, geology, and education, have been making movies that have proved of great use in scientific talks, media interviews, and education. Thus, SCEC UseIT incorporates a wide variety of scientific and human resources to create products of value to the scientific and outreach communities. The program plans to continue with its interdisciplinary approach, increasing the relevance of the

The repository-based software engineering program: Redefining AdaNET as a mainstream NASA source

Science.gov (United States)

1993-01-01

The Repository-based Software Engineering Program (RBSE) is described to inform and update senior NASA managers about the program. Background and historical perspective on software reuse and RBSE for NASA managers who may not be familiar with these topics are provided. The paper draws upon and updates information from the RBSE Concept Document, baselined by NASA Headquarters, Johnson Space Center, and the University of Houston - Clear Lake in April 1992. Several of NASA's software problems and what RBSE is now doing to address those problems are described. Also, next steps to be taken to derive greater benefit from this Congressionally-mandated program are provided. The section on next steps describes the need to work closely with other NASA software quality, technology transfer, and reuse activities and focuses on goals and objectives relative to this need. RBSE's role within NASA is addressed; however, there is also the potential for systematic transfer of technology outside of NASA in later stages of the RBSE program. This technology transfer is discussed briefly.

Control software for the CBM readout chain

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Loizeau, Pierre-Alain [GSI Helmholtzzentrum fuer Schwerionenforschung GmbH (Germany)

2016-07-01

The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment, which will be built at FAIR, will use free-streaming readout electronics to acquire high-statistics data-sets of physics probes in fixed target heavy-ion collisions. Since no simple signatures suitable for a hardware trigger are available for most of them, reconstruction and selection of the interesting collisions will be done in software, in a computer farm called First Level Event Selector (FLES). The raw data coming from the detectors is pre-processed, pre-calibrated and aggregated in a FPGA based layer called Data Preprocessing Boards (DPB). IPbus will be used to communicate with the DPBs and through them with the elements of the readout chain closer to detectors. A slow control environment based on this software is developed by CBM to configure in an efficient way the DPBs as well as the Front-End Electronics and monitor their performances. This contribution presents the layout planned for the slow control software, its first implementation and corresponding test results.

Safety critical software development qualification

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Marron, J. E.

2006-01-01

With the increasing use of digital systems in control applications, customers must acquire appropriate expectations for software development and quality assurance procedures. Purchasers and users of digital systems need to understand the benefits to the supplier of effective quality systems. These systems consist not only of procedures but tools that enable automation. Without the use of automation, quality can not be assured. A software and systems quality program starts with the documents you are very familiar with. But these documents must define more than the final system. They must address specific development environment characteristics and testing capabilities. Starting with the RFP, some of the items that should be introduced are Software Configuration Management, regression testing and defect tracking. The digital system customer is in the best position to enforce the use of software and systems quality programs by including them in project requirements as early as the Purchase Order. The customer's understanding of the full scope and implementation of a software quality program is essential to achieving the quality necessary in nuclear projects, and, incidentally, completing those projects on schedule. (authors)

Saltwell PIC Skid Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) Software Configuration Management Plan

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

KOCH, M.R.

1999-01-01

This document provides the procedures and guidelines necessary for computer software configuration management activities during the operation and maintenance phases of the Saltwell PIC Skids as required by LMH-PRO-309/Rev. 0, Computer Software Quality Assurance, Section 2.6, Software Configuration Management. The software configuration management plan (SCMP) integrates technical and administrative controls to establish and maintain technical consistency among requirements, physical configuration, and documentation for the Saltwell PIC Skid Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) software during the Hanford application, operations and maintenance. This SCMP establishes the Saltwell PIC Skid PLC Software Baseline, status changes to that baseline, and ensures that software meets design and operational requirements and is tested in accordance with their design basis

Markov Chains For Testing Redundant Software

Science.gov (United States)

White, Allan L.; Sjogren, Jon A.

1990-01-01

Preliminary design developed for validation experiment that addresses problems unique to assuring extremely high quality of multiple-version programs in process-control software. Approach takes into account inertia of controlled system in sense it takes more than one failure of control program to cause controlled system to fail. Verification procedure consists of two steps: experimentation (numerical simulation) and computation, with Markov model for each step.

CHECWORKS integrated software for corrosion control

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Schefski, C.; Pietralik; Hazelton, T.

1997-01-01

CHECWORKS, a comprehensive software package for managing Flow-Accelerated Corrosion (FAC, also called erosion-corrosion and flow-assisted corrosion) concerns, is expanding to include other systems and other aspects of corrosion control in CANDU reactors. This paper will outline CHECWORKS applications at various CANDU stations and further plans for CHECWORKS to become a code for comprehensive corrosion control management. (author)

A Comparison of Four Software Programs for Implementing Decision Analytic Cost-Effectiveness Models.

Science.gov (United States)

Hollman, Chase; Paulden, Mike; Pechlivanoglou, Petros; McCabe, Christopher

2017-08-01

The volume and technical complexity of both academic and commercial research using decision analytic modelling has increased rapidly over the last two decades. The range of software programs used for their implementation has also increased, but it remains true that a small number of programs account for the vast majority of cost-effectiveness modelling work. We report a comparison of four software programs: TreeAge Pro, Microsoft Excel, R and MATLAB. Our focus is on software commonly used for building Markov models and decision trees to conduct cohort simulations, given their predominance in the published literature around cost-effectiveness modelling. Our comparison uses three qualitative criteria as proposed by Eddy et al.: "transparency and validation", "learning curve" and "capability". In addition, we introduce the quantitative criterion of processing speed. We also consider the cost of each program to academic users and commercial users. We rank the programs based on each of these criteria. We find that, whilst Microsoft Excel and TreeAge Pro are good programs for educational purposes and for producing the types of analyses typically required by health technology assessment agencies, the efficiency and transparency advantages of programming languages such as MATLAB and R become increasingly valuable when more complex analyses are required.

Application of software quality assurance to a specific scientific code development task

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dronkers, J.J.

1986-03-01

This paper describes an application of software quality assurance to a specific scientific code development program. The software quality assurance program consists of three major components: administrative control, configuration management, and user documentation. The program attempts to be consistent with existing local traditions of scientific code development while at the same time providing a controlled process of development

Software Quality Control at Belle II

Science.gov (United States)

Ritter, M.; Kuhr, T.; Hauth, T.; Gebard, T.; Kristof, M.; Pulvermacher, C.; Belle Software Group, II

2017-10-01

Over the last seven years the software stack of the next generation B factory experiment Belle II has grown to over one million lines of C++ and Python code, counting only the part included in offline software releases. There are several thousand commits to the central repository by about 100 individual developers per year. To keep a coherent software stack of high quality that it can be sustained and used efficiently for data acquisition, simulation, reconstruction, and analysis over the lifetime of the Belle II experiment is a challenge. A set of tools is employed to monitor the quality of the software and provide fast feedback to the developers. They are integrated in a machinery that is controlled by a buildbot master and automates the quality checks. The tools include different compilers, cppcheck, the clang static analyzer, valgrind memcheck, doxygen, a geometry overlap checker, a check for missing or extra library links, unit tests, steering file level tests, a sophisticated high-level validation suite, and an issue tracker. The technological development infrastructure is complemented by organizational means to coordinate the development.

Imaging of jaw with dental CT software program: Normal Anatomy

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kim, Myong Gon; Seo, Kwang Hee; Jung, Hak Young; Sung, Nak Kwan; Chung, Duk Soo; Kim, Ok Dong; Lee, Young Hwan

1994-01-01

Dental CT software program can provide reformatted cross-sectional and panoramic images that cannot be obtained with conventional axial and direct coronal CT scan. The purpose of this study is to describe the method of the technique and to identify the precise anatomy of jaw. We evaluated 13 mandibles and 7 maxillae of 15 subjects without bony disease who were being considered for endosseous dental implants. Reformatted images obtained by the use of bone algorithm performed on GE HiSpeed Advantage CT scanner were retrospectively reviewed for detailed anatomy of jaw. Anatomy related to neurovascular bundle(mandibular foramen, inferior alveolar canal, mental foramen, canal for incisive artery, nutrient canal, lingual foramen and mylohyoid groove), muscular insertion(mylohyoid line, superior and inferior genial tubercle and digastric fossa) and other anatomy(submandibular fossa, sublingual fossa, contour of alveolar process, oblique line, retromolar fossa, temporal crest and retromolar triangle) were well delineated in mandible. In maxilla, anatomy related to neurovascular bundle(greater palatine foramen and groove, nasopalatine canal and incisive foramen) and other anatomy(alveolar process, maxillary sinus and nasal fossa) were also well delineated. Reformatted images using dental CT software program provided excellent delineation of the jaw anatomy. Therefore, dental CT software program can play an important role in the preoperative assessment of mandible and maxilla for dental implants and other surgical conditions

Honeywell Modular Automation System Computer Software Documentation for the Magnesium Hydroxide Precipitation Process

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

STUBBS, A.M.

2001-01-01

The purpose of this Computer Software Document (CSWD) is to provide configuration control of the Honeywell Modular Automation System (MAS) in use at the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) for the Magnesium Hydroxide Precipitation Process in Rm 230C/234-5Z. The magnesium hydroxide process control software Rev 0 is being updated to include control programming for a second hot plate. The process control programming was performed by the system administrator. Software testing for the additional hot plate was performed per PFP Job Control Work Package 2Z-00-1703. The software testing was verified by Quality Control to comply with OSD-Z-184-00044, Magnesium Hydroxide Precipitation Process

Development of a programming model for radiation-resistant software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Eichhorn, G.; Piercey, R.B.

1984-01-01

The adverse effects of ionizing radiation on microelectronic systems include cumulative dosage effects, single-event upsets (SEU's) and latch-up. Most frequent, especially when the radiation environment includes heavy ions, are SEU's. Unfortunately SEU's are difficult to detect since they can be read (in RAM or ROM) as valid addresses. They can however be handled in software by proper techniques. The authors refer to their method as MRS - Maximally Redundant Software. The MRS programming model which the authors are developing uses multiply redundant boot blocks, majority voting, periodic refresh, and error recovery techniques to minimize the deleterious effects of SEU's. 1 figure

Simulation software support (S3) system a software testing and debugging tool

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Burgess, D.C.; Mahjouri, F.S.

1990-01-01

The largest percentage of technical effort in the software development process is accounted for debugging and testing. It is not unusual for a software development organization to spend over 50% of the total project effort on testing. In the extreme, testing of human-rated software (e.g., nuclear reactor monitoring, training simulator) can cost three to five times as much as all other software engineering steps combined. The Simulation Software Support (S 3 ) System, developed by the Link-Miles Simulation Corporation is ideally suited for real-time simulation applications which involve a large database with models programmed in FORTRAN. This paper will focus on testing elements of the S 3 system. In this paper system support software utilities are provided which enable the loading and execution of modules in the development environment. These elements include the Linking/Loader (LLD) for dynamically linking program modules and loading them into memory and the interactive executive (IEXEC) for controlling the execution of the modules. Features of the Interactive Symbolic Debugger (SD) and the Real Time Executive (RTEXEC) to support the unit and integrated testing will be explored

Distributed controller clustering in software defined networks.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ahmed Abdelaziz

Full Text Available Software Defined Networking (SDN is an emerging promising paradigm for network management because of its centralized network intelligence. However, the centralized control architecture of the software-defined networks (SDNs brings novel challenges of reliability, scalability, fault tolerance and interoperability. In this paper, we proposed a novel clustered distributed controller architecture in the real setting of SDNs. The distributed cluster implementation comprises of multiple popular SDN controllers. The proposed mechanism is evaluated using a real world network topology running on top of an emulated SDN environment. The result shows that the proposed distributed controller clustering mechanism is able to significantly reduce the average latency from 8.1% to 1.6%, the packet loss from 5.22% to 4.15%, compared to distributed controller without clustering running on HP Virtual Application Network (VAN SDN and Open Network Operating System (ONOS controllers respectively. Moreover, proposed method also shows reasonable CPU utilization results. Furthermore, the proposed mechanism makes possible to handle unexpected load fluctuations while maintaining a continuous network operation, even when there is a controller failure. The paper is a potential contribution stepping towards addressing the issues of reliability, scalability, fault tolerance, and inter-operability.

Distributed controller clustering in software defined networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Abdelaziz, Ahmed; Fong, Ang Tan; Gani, Abdullah; Garba, Usman; Khan, Suleman; Akhunzada, Adnan; Talebian, Hamid; Choo, Kim-Kwang Raymond

2017-01-01

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging promising paradigm for network management because of its centralized network intelligence. However, the centralized control architecture of the software-defined networks (SDNs) brings novel challenges of reliability, scalability, fault tolerance and interoperability. In this paper, we proposed a novel clustered distributed controller architecture in the real setting of SDNs. The distributed cluster implementation comprises of multiple popular SDN controllers. The proposed mechanism is evaluated using a real world network topology running on top of an emulated SDN environment. The result shows that the proposed distributed controller clustering mechanism is able to significantly reduce the average latency from 8.1% to 1.6%, the packet loss from 5.22% to 4.15%, compared to distributed controller without clustering running on HP Virtual Application Network (VAN) SDN and Open Network Operating System (ONOS) controllers respectively. Moreover, proposed method also shows reasonable CPU utilization results. Furthermore, the proposed mechanism makes possible to handle unexpected load fluctuations while maintaining a continuous network operation, even when there is a controller failure. The paper is a potential contribution stepping towards addressing the issues of reliability, scalability, fault tolerance, and inter-operability.

Software control and system configuration management - A process that works

Science.gov (United States)

Petersen, K. L.; Flores, C., Jr.

1983-01-01

A comprehensive software control and system configuration management process for flight-crucial digital control systems of advanced aircraft has been developed and refined to insure efficient flight system development and safe flight operations. Because of the highly complex interactions among the hardware, software, and system elements of state-of-the-art digital flight control system designs, a systems-wide approach to configuration control and management has been used. Specific procedures are implemented to govern discrepancy reporting and reconciliation, software and hardware change control, systems verification and validation testing, and formal documentation requirements. An active and knowledgeable configuration control board reviews and approves all flight system configuration modifications and revalidation tests. This flexible process has proved effective during the development and flight testing of several research aircraft and remotely piloted research vehicles with digital flight control systems that ranged from relatively simple to highly complex, integrated mechanizations.

Software control and system configuration management: A systems-wide approach

Science.gov (United States)

Petersen, K. L.; Flores, C., Jr.

1984-01-01

A comprehensive software control and system configuration management process for flight-crucial digital control systems of advanced aircraft has been developed and refined to insure efficient flight system development and safe flight operations. Because of the highly complex interactions among the hardware, software, and system elements of state-of-the-art digital flight control system designs, a systems-wide approach to configuration control and management has been used. Specific procedures are implemented to govern discrepancy reporting and reconciliation, software and hardware change control, systems verification and validation testing, and formal documentation requirements. An active and knowledgeable configuration control board reviews and approves all flight system configuration modifications and revalidation tests. This flexible process has proved effective during the development and flight testing of several research aircraft and remotely piloted research vehicles with digital flight control systems that ranged from relatively simple to highly complex, integrated mechanizations.

EFOM 12C software: general overview. Final report

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Jadot, P; Fuchsova, J; Vankelecom, E; Van der Voort, E; Thonet, C

1981-01-01

A logic manual defining the general philosophy of the EC-12C software is presented. The guidelines used to develop the Energy Data Base and the programs of the energy flow models are: within the frame of some basic conventions, the data base structure and software should be as independent as possible from the energy system representation; utilization of the models should be user-friendly; as data has to be collected and manipulated by various national expert teams, extensive data consistency checks and appropriate error messages should be included in the software to support the data validation process; the various energy flow models should be integrated; the outputs of the programs should be user-controlled; and the scope of the study is under user's control. As a result of those guidelines, an integrated set of software composed of DAMOCLES (Data Base Management System); SIML (simulation program suitable for data analysis and description study); and ORESTE EDISON (LP matrix generator and report writer) was developed. These are described.

Continuous integration and quality control for scientific software

Science.gov (United States)

Neidhardt, A.; Ettl, M.; Brisken, W.; Dassing, R.

2013-08-01

Modern software has to be stable, portable, fast and reliable. This is going to be also more and more important for scientific software. But this requires a sophisticated way to inspect, check and evaluate the quality of source code with a suitable, automated infrastructure. A centralized server with a software repository and a version control system is one essential part, to manage the code basis and to control the different development versions. While each project can be compiled separately, the whole code basis can also be compiled with one central “Makefile”. This is used to create automated, nightly builds. Additionally all sources are inspected automatically with static code analysis and inspection tools, which check well-none error situations, memory and resource leaks, performance issues, or style issues. In combination with an automatic documentation generator it is possible to create the developer documentation directly from the code and the inline comments. All reports and generated information are presented as HTML page on a Web server. Because this environment increased the stability and quality of the software of the Geodetic Observatory Wettzell tremendously, it is now also available for scientific communities. One regular customer is already the developer group of the DiFX software correlator project.

Development of computer-aided software engineering tool for sequential control of JT-60U

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Shimono, M.; Akasaka, H.; Kurihara, K.; Kimura, T.

1995-01-01

Discharge sequential control (DSC) is an essential control function for the intermittent and pulse discharge operation of a tokamak device, so that many subsystems may work with each other in correct order and/or synchronously. In the development of the DSC program, block diagrams of logical operation for sequential control are illustrated in its design at first. Then, the logical operators and I/O's which are involved in the block diagrams are compiled and converted to a certain particular form. Since the block diagrams of the sequential control amounts to about 50 sheets in the case of the JT-60 upgrade tokamak (JT-60U) high power discharge and the above steps of the development have been performed manually so far, a great effort has been required for the program development. In order to remove inefficiency in such development processes, a computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tool has been developed on a UNIX workstation. This paper reports how the authors design it for the development of the sequential control programs. The tool is composed of the following three tools: (1) Automatic drawing tool, (2) Editing tool, and (3) Trace tool. This CASE tool, an object-oriented programming tool having graphical formalism, can powerfully accelerate the cycle for the development of the sequential control function commonly associated with pulse discharge in a tokamak fusion device

Software for microcircuit systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kunz, P.F.

1978-01-01

Modern Large Scale Integration (LSI) microcircuits are meant to be programmed in order to control the function that they perform. In the previous paper the author has already discussed the basics of microprogramming and have studied in some detail two types of new microcircuits. In this paper, methods of developing software for these microcircuits are explored. This generally requires a package of support software in order to assemble the microprogram, and also some amount of support software to test the microprograms and to test the microprogrammed circuit itself. (Auth.)

Arbitrating Control of Control and Display Units

Science.gov (United States)

Sugden, Paul C.

2007-01-01

The ARINC 739 Switch is a computer program that arbitrates control of two multi-function control and display units (MCDUs) between (1) a commercial flight-management computer (FMC) and (2) NASA software used in research on transport aircraft. (MCDUs are the primary interfaces between pilots and FMCs on many commercial aircraft.) This program was recently redesigned into a software library that can be embedded in research application programs. As part of the redesign, this software was combined with software for creating custom pages of information to be displayed on a CDU. This software commands independent switching of the left (pilot s) and right (copilot s) MCDUs. For example, a custom CDU page can control the left CDU while the FMC controls the right CDU. The software uses menu keys to switch control of the CDU between the FMC or a custom CDU page. The software provides an interface that enables custom CDU pages to insert keystrokes into the FMC s CDU input interface. This feature allows the custom CDU pages to manipulate the FMC as if it were a pilot.

A control system verifier using automated reasoning software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Smith, D.E.; Seeman, S.E.

1985-08-01

An on-line, automated reasoning software system for verifying the actions of other software or human control systems has been developed. It was demonstrated by verifying the actions of an automated procedure generation system. The verifier uses an interactive theorem prover as its inference engine with the rules included as logical axioms. Operation of the verifier is generally transparent except when the verifier disagrees with the actions of the monitored software. Testing with an automated procedure generation system demonstrates the successful application of automated reasoning software for verification of logical actions in a diverse, redundant manner. A higher degree of confidence may be placed in the verified actions of the combined system

Intercomparison of alpha particle spectrometry software packages

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1999-08-01

Software has reached an important level as the 'logical controller' at different levels, from a single instrument to an entire computer-controlled experiment. This is also the case for software packages in nuclear instruments and experiments. In particular, because of the range of applications of alpha-particle spectrometry, software packages in this field are often used. It is the aim of this intercomparison to test and describe the abilities of four such software packages. The main objectives of the intercomparison were the ability of the programs to determine the peak areas and the peak area uncertainties, and the statistical control and stability of reported results. In this report, the task, methods and results of the intercomparison are presented in order to asist the potential users of such software and to stimulate the development of even better alpha-particle spectrum analysis software

Software management of the LHC Detector Control Systems

CERN Document Server

Varela, F

2007-01-01

The control systems of each of the four Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments will contain of the order of 150 computers running the back-end applications. These applications will have to be maintained and eventually upgraded during the lifetime of the experiments, ~20 years. This paper presents the centralized software management strategy adopted by the Joint COntrols Project (JCOP) [1], which is based on a central database that holds the overall system configuration. The approach facilitates the integration of different parts of a control system and provides versioning of its various software components. The information stored in the configuration database can eventually be used to restore a computer in the event of failure.

Software management of the LHC detector control systems

CERN Document Server

Varela, F

2007-01-01

The control systems of each of the four Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments will contain of the order of 150 computers running the back-end applications. These applications will have to be maintained and eventually upgraded during the lifetime of the experiments, ~20 years. This paper presents the centralized software management strategy adopted by the Joint COntrols Project (JCOP) [1], which is based on a central database that holds the overall system configuration. The approach facilitates the integration of different parts of a control system and provides versioning of its various software components. The information stored in the configuration database can eventually be used to restore a computer in the event of failure.

Software attribute visualization for high integrity software

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Pollock, G.M.

1998-03-01

This report documents a prototype tool developed to investigate the use of visualization and virtual reality technologies for improving software surety confidence. The tool is utilized within the execution phase of the software life cycle. It provides a capability to monitor an executing program against prespecified requirements constraints provided in a program written in the requirements specification language SAGE. The resulting Software Attribute Visual Analysis Tool (SAVAnT) also provides a technique to assess the completeness of a software specification.

SWiFT Software Quality Assurance Plan.

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Berg, Jonathan Charles [Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

2016-01-01

This document describes the software development practice areas and processes which contribute to the ability of SWiFT software developers to provide quality software. These processes are designed to satisfy the requirements set forth by the Sandia Software Quality Assurance Program (SSQAP). APPROVALS SWiFT Software Quality Assurance Plan (SAND2016-0765) approved by: Department Manager SWiFT Site Lead Dave Minster (6121) Date Jonathan White (6121) Date SWiFT Controls Engineer Jonathan Berg (6121) Date CHANGE HISTORY Issue Date Originator(s) Description A 2016/01/27 Jon Berg (06121) Initial release of the SWiFT Software Quality Assurance Plan

Data acquisition and processing software for linear PSD based neutron diffractometers

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pande, S.S.; Borkar, S.P.; Ghodgaonkar, M.D.

2003-01-01

As a part of data acquisition system for various single and multi-PSD diffractometers software is developed to acquire the data and support the requirements of diffraction experiments. The software is a front-end Windows 98 application on PC and a transputer program on the MPSD card. The front-end application provides entire user interface required for data acquisition, control, presentation and system setup. Data is acquired and the diffraction spectra are generated in the transputer program. All the required hardware control is also implemented in the transputer program. The two programs communicate using a device driver named VTRANSPD. The software plays a vital role in customizing and integrating the data acquisition system for various diffractometer setups. Also the experiments are effectively automated in the software which has helped in making best use of available beam time. These and other features of the data acquisition and processing software are presented here. This software is being used along with the data acquisition system at a few single PSD and multi-PSD diffractometers. (author)

Ground control station software design for micro aerial vehicles

Science.gov (United States)

Walendziuk, Wojciech; Oldziej, Daniel; Binczyk, Dawid Przemyslaw; Slowik, Maciej

2017-08-01

This article describes the process of designing the equipment part and the software of a ground control station used for configuring and operating micro unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). All the works were conducted on a quadrocopter model being a commonly accessible commercial construction. This article contains a characteristics of the research object, the basics of operating the micro aerial vehicles (MAV) and presents components of the ground control station model. It also describes the communication standards for the purpose of building a model of the station. Further part of the work concerns the software of the product - the GIMSO application (Generally Interactive Station for Mobile Objects), which enables the user to manage the actions and communication and control processes from the UAV. The process of creating the software and the field tests of a station model are also presented in the article.

Guidance and Control Software Project Data - Volume 4: Configuration Management and Quality Assurance Documents

Science.gov (United States)

Hayhurst, Kelly J. (Editor)

2008-01-01

The Guidance and Control Software (GCS) project was the last in a series of software reliability studies conducted at Langley Research Center between 1977 and 1994. The technical results of the GCS project were recorded after the experiment was completed. Some of the support documentation produced as part of the experiment, however, is serving an unexpected role far beyond its original project context. Some of the software used as part of the GCS project was developed to conform to the RTCA/DO-178B software standard, "Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification," used in the civil aviation industry. That standard requires extensive documentation throughout the software development life cycle, including plans, software requirements, design and source code, verification cases and results, and configuration management and quality control data. The project documentation that includes this information is open for public scrutiny without the legal or safety implications associated with comparable data from an avionics manufacturer. This public availability has afforded an opportunity to use the GCS project documents for DO-178B training. This report provides a brief overview of the GCS project, describes the 4-volume set of documents and the role they are playing in training, and includes configuration management and quality assurance documents from the GCS project. Volume 4 contains six appendices: A. Software Accomplishment Summary for the Guidance and Control Software Project; B. Software Configuration Index for the Guidance and Control Software Project; C. Configuration Management Records for the Guidance and Control Software Project; D. Software Quality Assurance Records for the Guidance and Control Software Project; E. Problem Report for the Pluto Implementation of the Guidance and Control Software Project; and F. Support Documentation Change Reports for the Guidance and Control Software Project.

Timing system control software in the SLC

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Thompson, K.; Phinney, N.

1985-04-01

A new timing system that allows precision (approx.1 to 2 ns) control of the trigger times of klystrons, beam position monitors, and other devices on a pulse-to-pulse basis at up to 360 Hz is in operation in the first third of the SLAC linear accelerator. The control software is divided between a central host VAX and local Intel 8086-based microprocessor clusters. Facilities exist to set up and adjust the timing of devices or groups of devices independently for beam pulses having different destinations and purposes, which are run in an interlaced fashion during normal machine operation. Upgrading of the system is currently underway, using a new version of the Programmable Delay Unit CAMAC module to allow pipelining of timing information for three machine pulses. An overview of the current state of the system is presented in this paper, with an emphasis on software control

Real-time Control Mediation in Agile Distributed Software Development

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Persson, John Stouby; Aaen, Ivan; Mathiassen, Lars

2008-01-01

Agile distributed environments pose particular challenges related to control of quality and collaboration in software development. Moreover, while face-to-face interaction is fundamental in agile development, distributed environments must rely extensively on mediated interactions. On this backdrop...... control was mediated over distance by technology through real-time exchanges. Contrary to previous research, the analysis suggests that both formal and informal elements of real-time mediated control were used; that evolving goals and adjustment of expectations were two of the main issues in real......-time mediated control exchanges; and, that the actors, despite distances in space and culture, developed a clan-like pattern mediated by technology to help control quality and collaboration in software development....

Can easy-to-use software deliver effective e-learning in dental education? A randomised controlled study.

Science.gov (United States)

Woelber, J P; Hilbert, T S; Ratka-Krüger, P

2012-08-01

For the production of computer-based learning environments, a wide range of software solutions can be used which differ not only in their functionality but also vary in cost and ease to program. The aim of our study was to evaluate the overall efficiency and student's perception of two case-based e-learning programs that were produced with either an easy-to-use or a complex software. Eighty-five dental students were randomly assigned to one of two experimental groups. One group studied with a laborious, high-interactive e-learning program (complex-software group). The second group studied within a low-interactive learning environment (easy-software group) that was easy to be programmed. Both programs identically referred to a case report on localised aggressive periodontitis. Learning outcome was tested by a pre- and post-test. Furthermore, questionnaires on workload, motivation, perceived usefulness and perceived learning outcome were used. Learners in the easy-software group showed better results in the post-test F(1, 82) = 4.173, P software tools have the potential to be beneficial in dental education. Students were showing a high acceptance and ability in using both e-learning environments. We conclude that e-learning programs for case-based learning do not have to be overly laborious to program to be useful. Based on our results, we want to encourage instructors to produce case-based e-learning tools with easy-to-use software. © 2012 John Wiley & Sons A/S.

Configuration management plan for the GENII software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rittmann, P.D.

1994-01-01

The GENII program calculates doses from radionuclides released into the environment for a variety of possible exposure scenarios. The user prepares an input data file with the necessary modelling assumptions and parameters. The program reads the user's input file, computes the necessary doses and stores these results in an output file. The output file also contains a listing of the user's input and gives the title lines from the data libraries which are accessed in the course of the calculations. The purpose of this document is to provide users of the GENII software with the configuration controls which are planned for use by WHC in accordance with WHC-CM-3-10. The controls are solely for WHC employees. Non-WHC individuals are not excluded, but no promise is made or implied that they will be informed of errors or revisions to the software. The configuration controls cover the GENII software, the GENII user's guide, the list of GENII users at WHC, and the backup copies. Revisions to the software must be approved prior to distribution in accordance with this configuration management plan

eXascale PRogramming Environment and System Software (XPRESS)

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Chapman, Barbara [Univ. of Houston, TX (United States); Gabriel, Edgar [Univ. of Houston, TX (United States)

2015-11-30

Exascale systems, with a thousand times the compute capacity of today’s leading edge petascale computers, are expected to emerge during the next decade. Their software systems will need to facilitate the exploitation of exceptional amounts of concurrency in applications, and ensure that jobs continue to run despite the occurrence of system failures and other kinds of hard and soft errors. Adapting computations at runtime to cope with changes in the execution environment, as well as to improve power and performance characteristics, is likely to become the norm. As a result, considerable innovation is required to develop system support to meet the needs of future computing platforms. The XPRESS project aims to develop and prototype a revolutionary software system for extreme-­scale computing for both exascale and strong­scaled problems. The XPRESS collaborative research project will advance the state-­of-­the-­art in high performance computing and enable exascale computing for current and future DOE mission-­critical applications and supporting systems. The goals of the XPRESS research project are to: A. enable exascale performance capability for DOE applications, both current and future, B. develop and deliver a practical computing system software X-­stack, OpenX, for future practical DOE exascale computing systems, and C. provide programming methods and environments for effective means of expressing application and system software for portable exascale system execution.

Vulnerabilities of Software for Mobile Phones and Secure Programming Techniques

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

T. R. Khabibullin

2012-09-01

Full Text Available The article reviews the most common mistakes made by developers when writing software for mobile platforms which lead to appearing vulnerabilities that allow attackers to perform various types of attacks. The basic principles of defensive programming are presented.

Automation of the software production process for multiple cryogenic control applications

OpenAIRE

Fluder, Czeslaw; Lefebvre, Victor; Pezzetti, Marco; Plutecki, Przemyslaw; Tovar-González, Antonio; Wolak, Tomasz

2018-01-01

The development of process control systems for the cryogenic infrastructure at CERN is based on an automatic software generation approach. The overall complexity of the systems, their frequent evolution as well as the extensive use of databases, repositories, commercial engineering software and CERN frameworks have led to further efforts towards improving the existing automation based software production methodology. A large number of control system upgrades were successfully performed for th...

Worldwide collaborative efforts in plasma control software development

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Penaflor, B.G.; Ferron, J.R.; Walker, M.L.; Humphreys, D.A.; Leuer, J.A.; Piglowski, D.A.; Johnson, R.D.; Xiao, B.J.; Hahn, S.H.; Gates, D.A.

2008-01-01

This presentation will describe the DIII-D collaborations with various tokamak experiments throughout the world which have adapted custom versions of the DIII-D plasma control system (PCS) software for their own use. Originally developed by General Atomics for use on the DIII-D tokamak, the PCS has been successfully installed and used for the NSTX experiment in Princeton, the MAST experiment in Culham UK, the EAST experiment in China, and the Pegasus experiment in the University of Wisconsin. In addition to these sites, a version of the PCS is currently being developed for use by the KSTAR tokamak in Korea. A well-defined and robust PCS software infrastructure has been developed to provide a common foundation for implementing the real-time data acquisition and feedback control codes. The PCS infrastructure provides a flexible framework that has allowed the PCS to be easily adapted to fulfill the unique needs of each site. The software has also demonstrated great flexibility in allowing for different computing, data acquisition and real-time networking hardware to be used. A description of the current PCS software architecture will be given along with experiences in developing and supporting the various PCS installations throughout the world

Design of a Nanosatellite Ground Monitoring and Control Software – a Case Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Freddy Alexander Díaz González

2016-04-01

Full Text Available The growing countries that have carried out the development of CubeSat missions for academic purposes do not offer aerospace engineering programs at their universities. This causes difficulties for traditional engineers upon the formal use of different standards and frameworks for aerospace development, such as the European Cooperation for Space Standardization and Space Mission Analysis and Design . One way in which traditional software engineers can easily understand the structure of an aerospace framework, in order to apply it on the development of CubeSat mission software parts, is comparing its most important elements in relation to the elements suggested by a more familiar method. In this paper, we present a hybrid framework between the ECSS-E-ST-40C standard and the Rational Unified Process, which can be used by traditional software engineers as a guide model for the development of software elements in academic nanosatellite missions. The model integrates the processes and documentation suggested by the ECSS-E-ST-40C with the disciplines, workflows and artifacts suggested in Rational Unified Process. This simplifies the structure of ECSS-E-ST-40C and allows traditional software engineers to easily understand its work elements. The paper describes as study case the implementation of the hybrid model in the analysis and design of ground monitoring and control software for the Libertad-2 satellite mission, which is currently being developed by the Universidad Sergio Arboleda in Colombia.

The Solid* toolset for software visual analytics of program structure and metrics comprehension : From research prototype to product

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Reniers, Dennie; Voinea, Lucian; Ersoy, Ozan; Telea, Alexandru

2014-01-01

Software visual analytics (SVA) tools combine static program analysis and fact extraction with information visualization to support program comprehension. However, building efficient and effective SVA tools is highly challenging, as it involves extensive software development in program analysis,

Software para Controle de Temperatura em Estufas

OpenAIRE

Silva, Antonio Carlos Alves; Universidade Federal de Lavras; Kanazawa, Edna Mie; Universidade Federal de Lavras; de Carvalho, Karina Dutra; Universidade Federal de Lavras; Kinoshita, Vanessa Godoy; Universidade Federal de Lavras; Uchoa, Joaquim Quinteiro; Universidade Federal de Lavras; Lacerda, Wilian Soares; Universidade Federal de Lavras; Schneider, Bruno de Oliveira; Universidade Federal de Lavras

2004-01-01

Neste trabalho é apresentado o projeto desenvolvido para controle de temperatura em estufas, denominado CTE, utilizando uma Interface de Aquisição e Controle de Dados. Todo o controle é feito via software, onde pode-se optar por dois tipos de controle: o controle automático, onde é possível definir-se a temperatura mínima e máxima; ou o controle manual, onde o usuário poderá optar por acionar periféricos de aquecimento, resfriamento e desligamento da estufa. Foi desenvolvida também uma interf...

Qt based control system software for Low Energy Accelerator Facility

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Basu, A.; Singh, S.; Nagraju, S.B.V.; Gupta, S.; Singh, P.

2012-01-01

Qt based control system software for Low Energy Accelerating Facility (LEAF) is operational at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Trombay, Mumbai. LEAF is a 50 keV negative ion electrostatic accelerator based on SNICS ion source. Control system uses Nokia Trolltech's QT 4.x API for control system software. Ni 6008 USB based multifunction cards has been used for control and read back field equipments such as power supplies, pumps, valves etc. Control system architecture is designed to be client server. Qt is chosen for its excellent GUI capability and platform independent nature. Control system follows client server architecture. The paper will describe the control system. (author)

Validation of FORTRAN emulators for the G2 varian control programs

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Delorme, G.

1996-01-01

The extensive use of the Gentilly full scope simulator for training and verification of plant procedures, forced the development of a reliable desktop simulator for software maintenance purposes. For that we needed emulators for the control programs which run on the DCC Varian computers in the full scope simulator. This paper presents the validation results for the Reactor Regulating System (RRS) program. This emulator was programmed in a modular fashion providing ease of maintenance and of transportation to another environment. The results obtained with specific tests or with integrated testing involving complex control rule interactions, compared favorably with the ones obtained using the actual plant control programs running on the full scope simulator, which constitutes an irrefutable validation procedure. This RRS package along with the other emulators being validated In this manner could be used in safety codes with confidence. (author)

Supervisory control software for MFTF neutral beams

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Woodruff, J.P.

1981-01-01

We describe the software structures that control the operation of MFTF Sustaining Neutral Beam Power Supplies (SNBPS). These components of the Supervisory Control and Diagnostics System (SCDS) comprise ten distinct tasks that exist in the SCDS system environment. The codes total about 16,000 lines of commented Pascal code and occupy 240 kbytes of memory. The controls have been running since March 1981, and at this writing are being integrated to the Local Control System and to the power supply Pulse Power Module Controller

Spot: A Programming Language for Verified Flight Software

Science.gov (United States)

Bocchino, Robert L., Jr.; Gamble, Edward; Gostelow, Kim P.; Some, Raphael R.

2014-01-01

The C programming language is widely used for programming space flight software and other safety-critical real time systems. C, however, is far from ideal for this purpose: as is well known, it is both low-level and unsafe. This paper describes Spot, a language derived from C for programming space flight systems. Spot aims to maintain compatibility with existing C code while improving the language and supporting verification with the SPIN model checker. The major features of Spot include actor-based concurrency, distributed state with message passing and transactional updates, and annotations for testing and verification. Spot also supports domain-specific annotations for managing spacecraft state, e.g., communicating telemetry information to the ground. We describe the motivation and design rationale for Spot, give an overview of the design, provide examples of Spot's capabilities, and discuss the current status of the implementation.

Concept document of the repository-based software engineering program: A constructive appraisal

Science.gov (United States)

1992-01-01

A constructive appraisal of the Concept Document of the Repository-Based Software Engineering Program is provided. The Concept Document is designed to provide an overview of the Repository-Based Software Engineering (RBSE) Program. The Document should be brief and provide the context for reading subsequent requirements and product specifications. That is, all requirements to be developed should be traceable to the Concept Document. Applied Expertise's analysis of the Document was directed toward assuring that: (1) the Executive Summary provides a clear, concise, and comprehensive overview of the Concept (rewrite as necessary); (2) the sections of the Document make best use of the NASA 'Data Item Description' for concept documents; (3) the information contained in the Document provides a foundation for subsequent requirements; and (4) the document adequately: identifies the problem being addressed; articulates RBSE's specific role; specifies the unique aspects of the program; and identifies the nature and extent of the program's users.

Software-Defined Congestion Control Algorithm for IP Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yao Hu

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The rapid evolution of computer networks, increase in the number of Internet users, and popularity of multimedia applications have exacerbated the congestion control problem. Congestion control is a key factor in ensuring network stability and robustness. When the underlying network and flow information are unknown, the transmission control protocol (TCP must increase or reduce the size of the congestion window to adjust to the changes of traffic in the Internet Protocol (IP network. However, it is possible that a software-defined approach can relieve the network congestion problem more efficiently. This approach has the characteristic of centralized control and can obtain a global topology for unified network management. In this paper, we propose a software-defined congestion control (SDCC algorithm for an IP network. We consider the difference between TCP and the user datagram protocol (UDP and propose a new method to judge node congestion. We initially apply the congestion control mechanism in the congested nodes and then optimize the link utilization to control network congestion.

Legal control scenario applied to embedded software in measuring instruments

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Castro, C.G. de; Brandao, P.C.; Leitao, F.O.

2013-01-01

This paper presents a scenario of legal control of software in measuring instruments. Such control is hampered by intrinsic problems related to software analysis and verification. To circumvent these difficulties, several projects are being developed to attack different stages of legal control, such as the model type approval, periodic verifications and metrological expertise. The proposals that will arise from these projects will be discussed among the parts and may be incorporated into the measuring instruments. (author)

Linear Programming Approaches for Power Savings in Software-defined Networks

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Moghaddam, F.A.; Grosso, P.

2016-01-01

Software-defined networks have been proposed as a viable solution to decrease the power consumption of the networking component in data center networks. Still the question remains on which scheduling algorithms are most suited to achieve this goal. We propose 4 different linear programming

Environmental Control System Software & Hardware Development

Science.gov (United States)

Vargas, Daniel Eduardo

2017-01-01

ECS hardware: (1) Provides controlled purge to SLS Rocket and Orion spacecraft. (2) Provide mission-focused engineering products and services. ECS software: (1) NASA requires Compact Unique Identifiers (CUIs); fixed-length identifier used to identify information items. (2) CUI structure; composed of nine semantic fields that aid the user in recognizing its purpose.

Experiment on safety software evaluation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Soubies, B.; Henry, J.Y.

1994-06-01

The licensing procedures process of nuclear plants includes compulsory steps which bring about a thorough exam of the commands control system. In this context the IPSN uses a tool called MALPAS to carry out an analysis of the quality of the software involved in safety control. The IPSN also try to obtain the automation of the generation of test games necessary for dynamical analysis. The MALPAS tool puts forward the particularities of programing which can influence the testability and the upholding of the studied software. (TEC). 4 refs

Understanding software faults and their role in software reliability modeling

Science.gov (United States)

Munson, John C.

1994-01-01

This study is a direct result of an on-going project to model the reliability of a large real-time control avionics system. In previous modeling efforts with this system, hardware reliability models were applied in modeling the reliability behavior of this system. In an attempt to enhance the performance of the adapted reliability models, certain software attributes were introduced in these models to control for differences between programs and also sequential executions of the same program. As the basic nature of the software attributes that affect software reliability become better understood in the modeling process, this information begins to have important implications on the software development process. A significant problem arises when raw attribute measures are to be used in statistical models as predictors, for example, of measures of software quality. This is because many of the metrics are highly correlated. Consider the two attributes: lines of code, LOC, and number of program statements, Stmts. In this case, it is quite obvious that a program with a high value of LOC probably will also have a relatively high value of Stmts. In the case of low level languages, such as assembly language programs, there might be a one-to-one relationship between the statement count and the lines of code. When there is a complete absence of linear relationship among the metrics, they are said to be orthogonal or uncorrelated. Usually the lack of orthogonality is not serious enough to affect a statistical analysis. However, for the purposes of some statistical analysis such as multiple regression, the software metrics are so strongly interrelated that the regression results may be ambiguous and possibly even misleading. Typically, it is difficult to estimate the unique effects of individual software metrics in the regression equation. The estimated values of the coefficients are very sensitive to slight changes in the data and to the addition or deletion of variables in the

DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING APPROACH TO TESTING RESOURCE ALLOCATION PROBLEM FOR MODULAR SOFTWARE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

P.K. Kapur

2003-02-01

Full Text Available Testing phase of a software begins with module testing. During this period modules are tested independently to remove maximum possible number of faults within a specified time limit or testing resource budget. This gives rise to some interesting optimization problems, which are discussed in this paper. Two Optimization models are proposed for optimal allocation of testing resources among the modules of a Software. In the first model, we maximize the total fault removal, subject to budgetary Constraint. In the second model, additional constraint representing aspiration level for fault removals for each module of the software is added. These models are solved using dynamic programming technique. The methods have been illustrated through numerical examples.

AgesGalore-A software program for evaluating spatially resolved luminescence data

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Greilich, S.; Harney, H.-L.; Woda, C.; Wagner, G.A.

2006-01-01

Low-light luminescence is usually recorded by photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) yielding integrated photon-number data. Highly sensitive CCD (charged coupled device) detectors allow for the spatially resolved recording of luminescence. The resulting two-dimensional images require suitable software for data processing. We present a recently developed software program specially designed for equivalent-dose evaluation in the framework of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating. The software is capable of appropriate CCD data handling, parameter estimation using a Bayesian approach, and the pixel-wise fitting of functions for time and dose dependencies to the luminescence signal. The results of the fitting procedure and the equivalent-dose evaluation can be presented and analyzed both as spatial and as frequency distributions

The graphics software of the Saclay Linear Accelerator control system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gournay, J.F.

1988-01-01

The graphics software used for the control of the Saclay Linear Accelerator is described. The specific requirements that such a software must have in this environment are outlined and some typical applications are presented. (orig.)

The BNL multiparticle spectrometer software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Saulys, A.C.

1985-01-01

This paper discusses some solutions to problems common to the design, management and maintenance of a large high energy physics spectrometer software system. The experience of dealing with a large, complex program and the necessity of having the programm controlled by various people at different levels of computer experience has led us to design a program control structure of mnemonic and self-explanatory nature. The use of this control language in both ''on-line'' and ''off-line'' operation of the program will be discussed. The solution of structuring a large program for modularity so that substantial changes to the program can be made easily for a wide variety of high energy physics experiments is discussed. Specialized tools for this type of large program management are also discussed. (orig.)

Control strategies used in the control software for the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Zhou, Wen-Xiong [College of Power Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044 (China); Postdoctoral Station, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044 (China); Wang, Yan-Yu [Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000 (China); Pan, Liang-Ming [College of Power Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044 (China); Tu, Sheng-Pan [State Grid Chongqing Maintenance Company, Chongqing 400044 (China)

2016-07-01

Automation control systems are important for the operation of an accelerator. To ensure the reliable, stable and flexible operation of the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou (HIRFL), several control systems are developed. The developed control systems are the SECRAL control system, the LECR3 control system, the LAPECR1 control system and the Electro-Static septum control system. The corresponding control software systems are developed using Visual C++. To ensure the accuracy, stability and flexibility of the control systems, some special control strategies are developed in the control software systems. This paper provides a detailed description of the main control strategies used in the control software systems. The main control strategies are composed of a reliable communication mechanism, a correct data/command transmission mechanism, an efficient data storage mechanism and an interlock protection mechanism. To guarantee a reliable communication between the devices for the commercially purchased devices and the built in-house ones, a modified heartbeat method is developed. To provide flexible reconstitution function for the control systems, the command queue and the state machine are combined. The message mechanism and the multiple windows mechanism are also used for the module mechanism. The relevant control systems are introduced as examples of these control strategies. These systems have been running stably for several years.

Control strategies used in the control software for the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhou, Wen-Xiong; Wang, Yan-Yu; Pan, Liang-Ming; Tu, Sheng-Pan

2016-01-01

Automation control systems are important for the operation of an accelerator. To ensure the reliable, stable and flexible operation of the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou (HIRFL), several control systems are developed. The developed control systems are the SECRAL control system, the LECR3 control system, the LAPECR1 control system and the Electro-Static septum control system. The corresponding control software systems are developed using Visual C++. To ensure the accuracy, stability and flexibility of the control systems, some special control strategies are developed in the control software systems. This paper provides a detailed description of the main control strategies used in the control software systems. The main control strategies are composed of a reliable communication mechanism, a correct data/command transmission mechanism, an efficient data storage mechanism and an interlock protection mechanism. To guarantee a reliable communication between the devices for the commercially purchased devices and the built in-house ones, a modified heartbeat method is developed. To provide flexible reconstitution function for the control systems, the command queue and the state machine are combined. The message mechanism and the multiple windows mechanism are also used for the module mechanism. The relevant control systems are introduced as examples of these control strategies. These systems have been running stably for several years.

Learning Theories Applied to Teaching Technology: Constructivism versus Behavioral Theory for Instructing Multimedia Software Programs

Science.gov (United States)

Reed, Cajah S.

2012-01-01

This study sought to find evidence for a beneficial learning theory to teach computer software programs. Additionally, software was analyzed for each learning theory's applicability to resolve whether certain software requires a specific method of education. The results are meant to give educators more effective teaching tools, so students…

Analysis and software development for controlling RF signal generator proton cyclotron Decy-13 using DDS Technique

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Prajitno

2012-01-01

Analysis and manufacture of computer programs for controlling the signal generator Radio Frequency (RF) proton cyclotron Decy-13 have been done. Signal generator uses a technique Direct Digital Synthesiser (DDS) which settings must be done with software. Signal generator consists of electronic modules which are: DDS, micro controller ATmega16, amplifier RF.dan ± 12 Vdc power supply. Function of the programs that have been made is to set the DDS module, namely: output frequency, step frequency and phase settings and displays the operating parameters of the DDS and the RF amplifier on the monitor screen. Computer programs created with Visual Basic and has been tested to control the RF signal generator to send data serially to the module ATmega16 and receives data to be displayed on the monitor screen. Testing sending and receiving data is done with a baudrate of 1200 bps to 19200 bps with perfect results. Computer programs that have been made equipped with a Human Machine Interface to provide values parameter input on the DDS operations. (author)

Software design specification and analysis(NuFDS) approach for the safety critical software based on porgrammable logic controller(PLC)

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Koo, Seo Ryong; Seong, Poong Hyun; Jung, Jin Yong; Choi, Seong Soo

2004-01-01

This paper introduces the software design specification and analysis technique for the safety-critical system based on Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). During software development phases, the design phase should perform an important role to connect between requirements phase and implementation phase as a process of translating problem requirements into software structures. In this work, the Nuclear FBD-style Design Specification and analysis (NuFDS) approach was proposed. The NuFDS approach for nuclear Instrumentation and Control (I and C) software are suggested in a straight forward manner. It consists of four major specifications as follows; Database, Software Architecture, System Behavior, and PLC Hardware Configuration. Additionally, correctness, completeness, consistency, and traceability check techniques are also suggested for the formal design analysis in NuFDS approach. In addition, for the tool supporting, we are developing NuSDS tool based on the NuFDS approach which is a tool, especially for the software design specification in nuclear fields

INDUSTRIAL ROBOT ARM SIMULATION SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT USING JAVA-3D AND MATLAB SIMULINK PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE

OpenAIRE

Wirabhuana, Arya

2011-01-01

Robot Arms Simulation Software development using Structured Programming Languages, Third Party Language, and Artificial Intelligence Programming Language are the common techniques in simulating robot arms movement. Those three techniques are having its strengths and weaknesses depend on several constraints such as robot type, degree of operation complexity to be simulated, operator skills, and also computer capability. This paper will discuss on Robot Arms Simulation Software (RSS) developmen...

Rapid Software Development for Experiment Control at OPAL

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hathaway, P.V.; Lam, Tony; Franceschini, Ferdi; Hauser, Nick; Rayner, Hugh

2005-01-01

Full text: ANSTO is undertaking the parallel development of instrument control and graphical experiment interface software for seven neutron beam instruments at OPAL. Each instrument poses several challenges for a common system solution, including custom detector interfaces, a range of motion and beamline optics schema, and a spectrum of online data reduction requirements. To provide a superior system with the least development effort, the computing team have adopted proven, configurable, server-based control software (SICS)1., a highly Integrated Scientific Experimental Environment (GumTree)2. and industry-standard database management systems. The resulting graphical interfaces allow operation in a familiar experiment domain, with monitoring of data and parameters independent of control system specifics. GumTree presents the experimenter with a consistent interface for experiment management, instrument control and data reduction tasks. The facility instrument scientists can easily reconfigure instruments and add ancillaries. The user community can expect a reduced learning curve for performing each experiment. GumTree can be installed anywhere for pre-experiment familiarisation, postprocessing of acquired data sets, and integration with third party analysis tools. Instrument scientists are seeing faster software development iterations and have a solid basis to prepare for the next suite of instruments. 1. SICS from PSI (lns00.psi.ch). 2. GumTree (gumtree.sourceforge.net), new site: http://gumtree.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Bayesian Software Health Management for Aircraft Guidance, Navigation, and Control

Science.gov (United States)

Schumann, Johann; Mbaya, Timmy; Menghoel, Ole

2011-01-01

Modern aircraft, both piloted fly-by-wire commercial aircraft as well as UAVs, more and more depend on highly complex safety critical software systems with many sensors and computer-controlled actuators. Despite careful design and V&V of the software, severe incidents have happened due to malfunctioning software. In this paper, we discuss the use of Bayesian networks (BNs) to monitor the health of the on-board software and sensor system, and to perform advanced on-board diagnostic reasoning. We will focus on the approach to develop reliable and robust health models for the combined software and sensor systems.

THE EFFECT OF A READING COMPREHENSION SOFTWARE PROGRAM ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT IN MATHEMATICS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

David E. Proudfoot

2016-06-01

Full Text Available In an effort to increase student achievement, research was conducted to determine the degree in which a reading comprehension software program effected the reading and math abilities of fourth and fifth grade students. Cognitive and educational studies were examined to select a reading comprehension software program as an intervention that would produce positive results in reading comprehension and possibly transfer positive results to achievement in other academic areas, specifically in math. The effects of the intervention were measured by assigning subjects to an experimental group. The total sample consisted of 39 students who were deficient in reading comprehension, and also exposed a significant weakness with word problem items on mathematical assessments. Four instruments were used to collect data before and after the treatment to measure student achievement. To determine the degree to which the software program effected student achievement, data from the four instruments were analyzed using SPSS software. A paired-samples dependent t test and a Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient was computed with ratio level data to test for a correlation between increased math scores and reading comprehension scores. Results yielded statistically significant and positive results in increasing reading comprehension skills that could possibly benefit students in reading and understanding mathematical problems. Results did not conclusively support that the increase of reading-comprehension skills had a collateral effect on students scoring higher with math word problems. The results are conducive to providing insight to educational leaders who plan to implement software as a means for increasing student achievement.

Software complex for developing dynamically packed program system for experiment automation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Baluka, G.; Salamatin, I.M.

1985-01-01

Software complex for developing dynamically packed program system for experiment automation is considered. The complex includes general-purpose programming systems represented as the RT-11 standard operating system and specially developed problem-oriented moduli providing execution of certain jobs. The described complex is realized in the PASKAL' and MAKRO-2 languages and it is rather flexible to variations of the technique of the experiment

Software design of a general purpose data acquisition and control executive

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Labiak, W.G.; Minor, E.G.

1981-01-01

The software design of an executive which performs general purpose data acquisition, monitoring, and control is presented. The executive runs on a memory-based mini or micro-computer and communicates with a disk-based computer where data analysis and display are done. The executive design stresses reliability and versatility, and has yielded software which can provide control and monitoring for widely different hardware systems. Applications of this software on two major fusion energy experiments at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will be described

Using software metrics and software reliability models to attain acceptable quality software for flight and ground support software for avionic systems

Science.gov (United States)

Lawrence, Stella

1992-01-01

This paper is concerned with methods of measuring and developing quality software. Reliable flight and ground support software is a highly important factor in the successful operation of the space shuttle program. Reliability is probably the most important of the characteristics inherent in the concept of 'software quality'. It is the probability of failure free operation of a computer program for a specified time and environment.

Encapsulating Software Platform Logic by Aspect-Oriented Programming : A Case Study in Using Aspects for Language Portability

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kats, L.C.; Visser, E.

2010-01-01

Software platforms such as the Java Virtual Machine or the CLR .NET virtual machine have their own ecosystem of a core programming language or instruction set, libraries, and developer community. Programming languages can target multiple software platforms to increase interoperability or to boost

Development of an object-oriented software based on fuzzy-logic for controlling temperatures in PAC experiments

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Lapolli, Andre L.; Yamagishi, Sueli; Domienikan, Claudio; Schoueri, Roberto M.; Carbonari, Artur W.; Saxena, Rajendra N., E-mail: alapolli@ipen.b [Instituto de Pesquisas Energeticas e Nucleares (IPEN/CNEN-SP), Sao Paulo, SP (Brazil)

2009-07-01

The Hyperfine Interaction Laboratory at Instituto de Pesquisas Energeticas e Nucleares (IPEN) has been using Perturbed Angular Correlation (PAC) technique for studying material science for more than 20 years. One of the important aspects of the research involves the study of the behavior of measured properties of samples as a function of temperature. For temperatures higher than room temperature a small resistance furnace is used to heat the sample. The need to carry out the PAC measurement at predefined temperatures steps in a programmed manner is obvious. The present work describes a procedure for the furnace temperature control and automatic data acquisition at different temperatures based on fuzzy logic. The procedure consists in determining the linguistic input (temp, DELTAtemp) and output (pow) variables and their pertinence functions. After defining the variables, an object.oriented program is written in Java language which is an interface between principal data acquisition program and electronic temperature controller of the mini furnace. In addition to the implementation of the class that involves the fuzzy logic and classes with strategic algorithms defined for each temperature range there are classes of communication between systems based on modbus protocol RTU (Remote Terminal Unit) connected to serial interface RS-488. In this manner the applied technology for the development of software permits higher software life requiring only small alterations or implementation of classes in the use with new equipment. (author)

The automatic programming for safety-critical software in nuclear power plants

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kim, Jang Yeol; Eom, Heung Seop; Choi, You Rark

1998-06-01

We defined the Korean unique safety-critical software development methodology by modifying Dr. Harel`s statechart-based on formal methods in order to digitalized the reactor protection system. It is suggested software requirement specification guideline to specify design specification which is basis for requirement specification and automatic programming by the caused by shutdown parameter logic of the steam generator water level for Wolsung 2/3/4 unit SDS no.1 and simulated it by binding the Graphic User Interface (GUI). We generated the K and R C code automatically by utilizing the Statemate MAGNUM Sharpshooter/C code generator. Auto-generated K and R C code is machine independent code and has high productivity, quality and provability. The following are the summaries of major research and development. - Set up the Korean unique safety-critical software development methodology - Developed software requirement specification guidelines - Developed software design specification guidelines - Reactor trip modeling for steam generator waster level Wolsung 2/3/4 SDS no. 1 shutdown parameter logic - Graphic panel binding with GUI. (author). 20 refs., 12 tabs., 15 figs

The automatic programming for safety-critical software in nuclear power plants

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kim, Jang Yeol; Eom, Heung Seop; Choi, You Rark

1998-06-01

We defined the Korean unique safety-critical software development methodology by modifying Dr. Harel's statechart-based on formal methods in order to digitalized the reactor protection system. It is suggested software requirement specification guideline to specify design specification which is basis for requirement specification and automatic programming by the caused by shutdown parameter logic of the steam generator water level for Wolsung 2/3/4 unit SDS no.1 and simulated it by binding the Graphic User Interface (GUI). We generated the K and R C code automatically by utilizing the Statemate MAGNUM Sharpshooter/C code generator. Auto-generated K and R C code is machine independent code and has high productivity, quality and provability. The following are the summaries of major research and development. - Set up the Korean unique safety-critical software development methodology - Developed software requirement specification guidelines - Developed software design specification guidelines - Reactor trip modeling for steam generator waster level Wolsung 2/3/4 SDS no. 1 shutdown parameter logic - Graphic panel binding with GUI. (author). 20 refs., 12 tabs., 15 figs

Integrating commercial software in accelerator control- case study

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pace, Alberto

1994-01-01

Using existing commercial software is the dream of any control system engineer for the development cost reduction that can reach one order of magnitude. This dream often vanishes when appears the requirement to have a uniform and consistent architecture through a wide number of components and applications. This makes it difficult to integrate several commercial packages that often impose different user interface and communication standards. This paper will describe the approach and standards that have been chosen for the CERN ISOLDE control system that have allowed several commercial packages to be integrated in the system as-they-are permitting the software development cost to be reduced to a minimum. (author). 10 refs., 2 tabs., 9 figs

Evolutional development of controlling software for agricultural vehicles and robots

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nakanishi, Tsuneo; Jæger-Hansen, Claes Lund; Griepentrog, Hans-Werner

Agricultural vehicles and robots expand their controlling software in size and complexity for their increasing functions. Due to repeated, ad hoc addition and modification, software gets structurally corrupted and becomes low performing, resource consuming and unreliable. This paper presents...

Software application for quality control protocol of mammography systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kjosevski, Vladimir; Gershan, Vesna; Ginovska, Margarita; Spasevska, Hristina

2010-01-01

Considering the fact that the Quality Control of the technological process of the mammographic system involves testing of a large number of parameters, it is clearly evident that there is a need for using the information technology for gathering, processing and storing of all the parameters that are result of this process. The main goal of this software application is facilitation and automation of the gathering, processing, storing and presenting process of the data related to the qualification of the physical and technical parameters during the quality control of the technological process of the mammographic system. The software application along with its user interface and database has been made with the Microsoft Access 2003 application which is part of the Microsoft Office 2003 software packet and has been chosen as a platform for developing because it is the most commonly used office application today among the computer users in the country. This is important because it will provide the end users a familiar environment to work in, without the need for additional training and improving the computer skills that they posses. Most importantly, the software application is easy to use, fast in calculating the parameters needed and it is an excellent way to store and display the results. There is a possibility for up scaling this software solution so it can be used by many different users at the same time over the Internet. It is highly recommended that this system is implemented as soon as possible in the quality control process of the mammographic systems due to its many advantages.(Author)

Laboratory cost control and financial management software.

Science.gov (United States)

Mayer, M

1998-02-09

Economical constraints within the health care system advocate the introduction of tighter control of costs in clinical laboratories. Detailed cost information forms the basis for cost control and financial management. Based on the cost information, proper decisions regarding priorities, procedure choices, personnel policies and investments can be made. This presentation outlines some principles of cost analysis, describes common limitations of cost analysis, and exemplifies use of software to achieve optimized cost control. One commercially available cost analysis software, LabCost, is described in some detail. In addition to provision of cost information, LabCost also serves as a general management tool for resource handling, accounting, inventory management and billing. The application of LabCost in the selection process of a new high throughput analyzer for a large clinical chemistry service is taken as an example for decisions that can be assisted by cost evaluation. It is concluded that laboratory management that wisely utilizes cost analysis to support the decision-making process will undoubtedly have a clear advantage over those laboratories that fail to employ cost considerations to guide their actions.

SAGA: A project to automate the management of software production systems

Science.gov (United States)

Campbell, Roy H.; Laliberte, D.; Render, H.; Sum, R.; Smith, W.; Terwilliger, R.

1987-01-01

The Software Automation, Generation and Administration (SAGA) project is investigating the design and construction of practical software engineering environments for developing and maintaining aerospace systems and applications software. The research includes the practical organization of the software lifecycle, configuration management, software requirements specifications, executable specifications, design methodologies, programming, verification, validation and testing, version control, maintenance, the reuse of software, software libraries, documentation, and automated management.

Demonstration of a Concurrently Programmed Tactical Level Control Software for Autonomous Vehicles and the Interface to the Execution Level Code

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Carroll, William

2000-01-01

.... One of the greatest challenges to the successful development of truly autonomous vehicles is the ability to link logically based high-level mission planning with low-level vehicle control software...

Project W-211, initial tank retrieval systems, retrieval control system software configuration management plan

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

RIECK, C.A.

1999-01-01

This Software Configuration Management Plan (SCMP) provides the instructions for change control of the W-211 Project, Retrieval Control System (RCS) software after initial approval/release but prior to the transfer of custody to the waste tank operations contractor. This plan applies to the W-211 system software developed by the project, consisting of the computer human-machine interface (HMI) and programmable logic controller (PLC) software source and executable code, for production use by the waste tank operations contractor. The plan encompasses that portion of the W-211 RCS software represented on project-specific AUTOCAD drawings that are released as part of the C1 definitive design package (these drawings are identified on the drawing list associated with each C-1 package), and the associated software code. Implementation of the plan is required for formal acceptance testing and production release. The software configuration management plan does not apply to reports and data generated by the software except where specifically identified. Control of information produced by the software once it has been transferred for operation is the responsibility of the receiving organization

Proteomics Quality Control: Quality Control Software for MaxQuant Results.

Science.gov (United States)

Bielow, Chris; Mastrobuoni, Guido; Kempa, Stefan

2016-03-04

Mass spectrometry-based proteomics coupled to liquid chromatography has matured into an automatized, high-throughput technology, producing data on the scale of multiple gigabytes per instrument per day. Consequently, an automated quality control (QC) and quality analysis (QA) capable of detecting measurement bias, verifying consistency, and avoiding propagation of error is paramount for instrument operators and scientists in charge of downstream analysis. We have developed an R-based QC pipeline called Proteomics Quality Control (PTXQC) for bottom-up LC-MS data generated by the MaxQuant software pipeline. PTXQC creates a QC report containing a comprehensive and powerful set of QC metrics, augmented with automated scoring functions. The automated scores are collated to create an overview heatmap at the beginning of the report, giving valuable guidance also to nonspecialists. Our software supports a wide range of experimental designs, including stable isotope labeling by amino acids in cell culture (SILAC), tandem mass tags (TMT), and label-free data. Furthermore, we introduce new metrics to score MaxQuant's Match-between-runs (MBR) functionality by which peptide identifications can be transferred across Raw files based on accurate retention time and m/z. Last but not least, PTXQC is easy to install and use and represents the first QC software capable of processing MaxQuant result tables. PTXQC is freely available at https://github.com/cbielow/PTXQC .

Techniques and tools for software qualification in KNICS

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Cha, Kyung H.; Lee, Yeong J.; Cheon, Se W.; Kim, Jang Y.; Lee, Jang S.; Kwon, Kee C.

2004-01-01

This paper describes techniques and tools for qualifying safety software in Korea Nuclear Instrumentation and Control System (KNICS). Safety software are developed and applied for a Reactor Protection System (RPS), an Engineered Safety Features and Component Control System (ESF-CCS), and a safety Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) in the KNICS. Requirements and design specifications of safety software are written by both natural language and formal specification languages. Statechart is used for formal specification of software of the ESF-CCS and the safety PLC while NuSCR is used for formal specification of them of the RPS. pSET (POSCON Software Engineering Tool) as a software development tool has been developed and utilized for the IEC61131-3 based PLC programming. The qualification of the safety software consists of software verification and validation (V and V) through software life cycle, software safety analysis, and software configuration management, software quality assurance, and COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) dedication. The criteria and requirements for qualifying the safety software have been established with them in Software Review Plan (SRP)/Branch Technical Positions (BTP)-14, IEEE Std. 7-4.3.2-1998, NUREG/CR-6463, IEEE Std. 1012-1998, and so on. Figure 1 summarizes qualification techniques and tools for the safety software

The ITER Fast Plant System Controller ATCA prototype Real-Time Software Architecture

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Carvalho, B.B.; Santos, B.; Carvalho, P.F.; Neto, A.; Boncagni, L.; Batista, A.J.N.; Correia, M.; Sousa, J.; Gonçalves, B.

2013-01-01

Highlights: ► High performance ATCA systems for fast control and data acquisition. ► IEEE1588 timing system and synchronization. ► Plasma control algorithms. ► Real-time control software frameworks. ► Targeted for nuclear fusion experiments with long duration discharges. -- Abstract: IPFN is developing a prototype Fast Plant System Controller (FPSC) based in ATCA embedded technologies dedicated to ITER CODAC data acquisition and control tasks in the sub-millisecond range. The main goal is to demonstrate the usability of the ATCA standard and its enhanced specifications for the high speed, very high density parallel data acquisition needs of the most demanding ITER tokamak plasma Instrumentation and Control (I and C) systems. This effort included the in-house development of a new family of high performance ATCA I/O and timing boards. The standard ITER software system CODAC Core System (CCS) v3.1, with the control based in the EPICS system does not cover yet the real-time requirements fulfilled by this hardware, so a new set of software components was developed for this specific platform, attempting to integrate and leverage the new features in CSS, for example the Multithreaded Application Real Time executor (MARTe) software framework, the new Data Archiving Network (DAN) solution, an ATCA IEEE-1588-2008 timing interface, and the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) for system monitoring and remote management. This paper presents the overall software architecture for the ATCA FPSC, as well a discussion on the ITER constrains and design choices and finally a detailed description of the software components already developed

The ITER Fast Plant System Controller ATCA prototype Real-Time Software Architecture

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Carvalho, B.B., E-mail: bernardo@ipfn.ist.utl.pt [Associacao EURATOM/IST Instituto de Plasmas e Fusao Nuclear, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Universidade Tecnica de Lisboa, P-1049-001 Lisboa (Portugal); Santos, B.; Carvalho, P.F.; Neto, A. [Associacao EURATOM/IST Instituto de Plasmas e Fusao Nuclear, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Universidade Tecnica de Lisboa, P-1049-001 Lisboa (Portugal); Boncagni, L. [Associazione Euratom-ENEA sulla Fusione, Frascati Research Centre, Division of Fusion Physics, Frascati, Rome (Italy); Batista, A.J.N.; Correia, M.; Sousa, J.; Gonçalves, B. [Associacao EURATOM/IST Instituto de Plasmas e Fusao Nuclear, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Universidade Tecnica de Lisboa, P-1049-001 Lisboa (Portugal)

2013-10-15

Highlights: ► High performance ATCA systems for fast control and data acquisition. ► IEEE1588 timing system and synchronization. ► Plasma control algorithms. ► Real-time control software frameworks. ► Targeted for nuclear fusion experiments with long duration discharges. -- Abstract: IPFN is developing a prototype Fast Plant System Controller (FPSC) based in ATCA embedded technologies dedicated to ITER CODAC data acquisition and control tasks in the sub-millisecond range. The main goal is to demonstrate the usability of the ATCA standard and its enhanced specifications for the high speed, very high density parallel data acquisition needs of the most demanding ITER tokamak plasma Instrumentation and Control (I and C) systems. This effort included the in-house development of a new family of high performance ATCA I/O and timing boards. The standard ITER software system CODAC Core System (CCS) v3.1, with the control based in the EPICS system does not cover yet the real-time requirements fulfilled by this hardware, so a new set of software components was developed for this specific platform, attempting to integrate and leverage the new features in CSS, for example the Multithreaded Application Real Time executor (MARTe) software framework, the new Data Archiving Network (DAN) solution, an ATCA IEEE-1588-2008 timing interface, and the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) for system monitoring and remote management. This paper presents the overall software architecture for the ATCA FPSC, as well a discussion on the ITER constrains and design choices and finally a detailed description of the software components already developed.

Hardware control system using modular software under RSX-11D

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kittell, R.S.; Helland, J.A.

1978-01-01

A modular software system used to control extensive hardware is described. The development, operation, and experience with this software are discussed. Included are the methods employed to implement this system while taking advantage of the Real-Time features of RSX-11D. Comparisons are made between this system and an earlier nonmodular system. The controlled hardware includes magnet power supplies, stepping motors, DVM's, and multiplexors, and is interfaced through CAMAC. 4 figures

Customizable software architectures in the accelerator control system environment

CERN Document Server

Mejuev, I; Kadokura, E

2001-01-01

Tailoring is further evolution of an application after deployment in order to adapt it to requirements that were not accounted for in the original design. End-user customization has been extensively researched in applied computer science from HCI and software engineering perspectives. Customization allows coping with flexibility requirements, decreasing maintenance and development costs of software products. In general, dynamic or diverse software requirements constitute the need for implementing end-user customization in computer systems. In accelerator physics research the factor of dynamic requirements is especially important, due to frequent software and hardware modifications resulting in correspondingly high upgrade and maintenance costs. We introduce the results of feasibility study on implementing end-user tailorability in the software for accelerator control system, considering the design and implementation of a distributed monitoring application for the 12 GeV KEK Proton Synchrotron as an example. T...

Saltwell Leak Detector Station Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) Software Configuration Management Plan (SCMP)

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

WHITE, K.A.

2000-01-01

This document provides the procedures and guidelines necessary for computer software configuration management activities during the operation and maintenance phases of the Saltwell Leak Detector Stations as required by HNF-PRO-309/Rev.1, Computer Software Quality Assurance, Section 2.4, Software Configuration Management. The software configuration management plan (SCMP) integrates technical and administrative controls to establish and maintain technical consistency among requirements, physical configuration, and documentation for the Saltwell Leak Detector Station Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) software during the Hanford application, operations and maintenance. This SCMP establishes the Saltwell Leak Detector Station PLC Software Baseline, status changes to that baseline, and ensures that software meets design and operational requirements and is tested in accordance with their design basis

SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) Software Technology Program Plan

Science.gov (United States)

1987-06-01

station control, and defense. c. Simulation Display Generator ( SDG ) [Patterson 83] I0 SDG supports the creation, display, modification, storage, and...34 Proceedings Trends and Applications 1981, IEEE, (May 28, 1981). [Parnas 86] Parnas, D.L., "When can Software be Trustworthy?" Keynote Address to Compass 󈨚

Strengthening Software Authentication with the ROSE Software Suite

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

White, G

2006-01-01

Many recent nonproliferation and arms control software projects include a software authentication regime. These include U.S. Government-sponsored projects both in the United States and in the Russian Federation (RF). This trend toward requiring software authentication is only accelerating. Demonstrating assurance that software performs as expected without hidden ''backdoors'' is crucial to a project's success. In this context, ''authentication'' is defined as determining that a software package performs only its intended purpose and performs said purpose correctly and reliably over the planned duration of an agreement. In addition to visual inspections by knowledgeable computer scientists, automated tools are needed to highlight suspicious code constructs, both to aid visual inspection and to guide program development. While many commercial tools are available for portions of the authentication task, they are proprietary and not extensible. An open-source, extensible tool can be customized to the unique needs of each project (projects can have both common and custom rules to detect flaws and security holes). Any such extensible tool has to be based on a complete language compiler. ROSE is precisely such a compiler infrastructure developed within the Department of Energy (DOE) and targeted at the optimization of scientific applications and user-defined libraries within large-scale applications (typically applications of a million lines of code). ROSE is a robust, source-to-source analysis and optimization infrastructure currently addressing large, million-line DOE applications in C and C++ (handling the full C, C99, C++ languages and with current collaborations to support Fortran90). We propose to extend ROSE to address a number of security-specific requirements, and apply it to software authentication for nonproliferation and arms control projects

A NEW EXHAUST VENTILATION SYSTEM DESIGN SOFTWARE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

H. Asilian Mahabady

2007-09-01

Full Text Available A Microsoft Windows based ventilation software package is developed to reduce time-consuming and boring procedure of exhaust ventilation system design. This program Assure accurate and reliable air pollution control related calculations. Herein, package is tentatively named Exhaust Ventilation Design Software which is developed in VB6 programming environment. Most important features of Exhaust Ventilation Design Software that are ignored in formerly developed packages are Collector design and fan dimension data calculations. Automatic system balance is another feature of this package. Exhaust Ventilation Design Software algorithm for design is based on two methods: Balance by design (Static pressure balance and design by Blast gate. The most important section of software is a spreadsheet that is designed based on American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists calculation sheets. Exhaust Ventilation Design Software is developed so that engineers familiar with American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists datasheet can easily employ it for ventilation systems design. Other sections include Collector design section (settling chamber, cyclone, and packed tower, fan geometry and dimension data section, a unit converter section (that helps engineers to deal with units, a hood design section and a Persian HTML help. Psychometric correction is also considered in Exhaust Ventilation Design Software. In Exhaust Ventilation Design Software design process, efforts are focused on improving GUI (graphical user interface and use of programming standards in software design. Reliability of software has been evaluated and results show acceptable accuracy.

Robot modelling; Control and applications with software

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ranky, P G; Ho, C Y

1985-01-01

This book provides a ''picture'' of robotics covering both the theoretical aspect of modeling as well as the practical and design aspects of: robot programming; robot tooling and automated hand changing; implementation planning; testing; and software design for robot systems. The authors present an introduction to robotics with a systems approach. They describe not only the tasks relating to a single robot (or arm) but also systems of robots working together on a product or several products.

Improving Software Systems By Flow Control Analysis

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Piotr Poznanski

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Using agile methods during the implementation of the system that meets mission critical requirements can be a real challenge. The change in the system built of dozens or even hundreds of specialized devices with embedded software requires the cooperation of a large group of engineers. This article presents a solution that supports parallel work of groups of system analysts and software developers. Deployment of formal rules to the requirements written in natural language enables using formal analysis of artifacts being a bridge between software and system requirements. Formalism and textual form of requirements allowed the automatic generation of message flow graph for the (sub system, called the “big-picture-model”. Flow diagram analysis helped to avoid a large number of defects whose repair cost in extreme cases could undermine the legitimacy of agile methods in projects of this scale. Retrospectively, a reduction of technical debt was observed. Continuous analysis of the “big picture model” improves the control of the quality parameters of the software architecture. The article also tries to explain why the commercial platform based on UML modeling language may not be sufficient in projects of this complexity.

Prometheus Reactor I&C Software Development Methodology, for Action

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

T. Hamilton

2005-07-30

The purpose of this letter is to submit the Reactor Instrumentation and Control (I&C) software life cycle, development methodology, and programming language selections and rationale for project Prometheus to NR for approval. This letter also provides the draft Reactor I&C Software Development Process Manual and Reactor Module Software Development Plan to NR for information.

IGDS/TRAP Interface Program (ITIP). Software User Manual (SUM). [network flow diagrams for coal gasification studies

Science.gov (United States)

Jefferys, S.; Johnson, W.; Lewis, R.; Rich, R.

1981-01-01

This specification establishes the requirements, concepts, and preliminary design for a set of software known as the IGDS/TRAP Interface Program (ITIP). This software provides the capability to develop at an Interactive Graphics Design System (IGDS) design station process flow diagrams for use by the NASA Coal Gasification Task Team. In addition, ITIP will use the Data Management and Retrieval System (DMRS) to maintain a data base from which a properly formatted input file to the Time-Line and Resources Analysis Program (TRAP) can be extracted. This set of software will reside on the PDP-11/70 and will become the primary interface between the Coal Gasification Task Team and IGDS, DMRS, and TRAP. The user manual for the computer program is presented.

Research of quality control during development of NPP DCS 1E classified software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Shi Weihua; Lu Zhenguo; Xie Qi

2012-01-01

The Nuclear safety depends on right behavior of 1E software, which is a important part of 1E DCS system. Nowadays, user focus on good function of 1E system, but pay little attention to quality control of 1E software. In fact, it's declared in IEC61513 and IEC60880 that 1E software should under strict quality control during all stages of development. This article is related to the practice of 1E DCS system quality control and explores the QC surveillance for 1E software from the user's point of view. (authors)

Real-Time Software for the Compass Tokamak Plasma Control

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Valcarcel, D.F.; Duarte, A.S.; Neto, A.; Carvalho, I.S.; Carvalho, B.B.; Fernandes, H.; Sousa, J. [Instituto de Plasmas e Fusao Nuclear, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa (Portugal); Sartori, F. [Euratom-UKAEA, Culham Science Centre, Abingdon, OX14 3DB Oxon (United Kingdom); Janky, F.; Cahyna, P.; Hron, M.; Panek, R. [Institute of Plasma Physics AS CR, v.v.i., Association EURATOM / IPP.CR, Prague (Costa Rica)

2009-07-01

This poster presents the flexible and high-performance real time system that guarantees the desired time cycles for plasma control on the COMPASS tokamak: 500 {mu}s for toroidal field, current, equilibrium and shaping; 50 {mu}s for fast control of the equilibrium and vertical instability. This system was developed on top of a high-performance processor and a software framework (MARTe) tailored for real-time. The preliminary measurements indicate that the time constraints will be met on the final solution. The system allows the making of modifications in the future to improve software components. (A.C.)

Software defined networks reactive flow programming and load balance switching

OpenAIRE

Καλλιανιώτης, Νικόλαος; Kallianiotis, Nikolaos

2017-01-01

This project serves as a Master Thesis as the requirements of the master’s programme Master of Digital Communications and Networks. It proposes load balancing algorithms applied to Software-Defined Networks to achieve the best possible resource utilisation of each of the links present in a network. The open-sources Opendaylight project and Floodlight project are used as SDN controllers, and the network is emulated using Mininet software

Safety management of software-based equipment

CERN Document Server

Boulanger, Jean-Louis

2013-01-01

A review of the principles of the safety of software-based equipment, this book begins by presenting the definition principles of safety objectives. It then moves on to show how it is possible to define a safety architecture (including redundancy, diversification, error-detection techniques) on the basis of safety objectives and how to identify objectives related to software programs. From software objectives, the authors present the different safety techniques (fault detection, redundancy and quality control). "Certifiable system" aspects are taken into account throughout the book. C

Software tools to aid Pascal and Ada program design

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Jankowitz, H.T.

1987-01-01

This thesis describes a software tool which analyses the style and structure of Pascal and Ada programs by ensuring that some minimum design requirements are fulfilled. The tool is used in much the same way as a compiler is used to teach students the syntax of a language, only in this case issues related to the design and structure of the program are of paramount importance. The tool operates by analyzing the design and structure of a syntactically correct program, automatically generating a report detailing changes that need to be made in order to ensure that the program is structurally sound. The author discusses how the model gradually evolved from a plagiarism detection system which extracted several measurable characteristics in a program to a model that analyzed the style of Pascal programs. In order to incorporate more-sophistical concepts like data abstraction, information hiding and data protection, this model was then extended to analyze the composition of Ada programs. The Ada model takes full advantage of facilities offered in the language and by using this tool the standard and quality of written programs is raised whilst the fundamental principles of program design are grasped through a process of self-tuition.

RIPE [robot independent programming environment]: A robot independent programming environment

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Miller, D.J.; Lennox, R.C.

1990-01-01

Remote manual operations in radiation environments are typically performed very slowly. Sensor-based computer-controlled robots hold great promise for increasing the speed and safety of remote operations; however, the programming of robotic systems has proven to be expensive and difficult. Generalized approaches to robot programming that reuse available software modules and employ programming languages which are independent of the specific robotic and sensory devices being used are needed to speed software development and increase overall system reliability. This paper discusses the robot independent programming environment (RIPE) developed at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL). The RIPE is an object-oriented approach to robot system architectures; it is a software environment that facilitates rapid design and implementation of complex robot systems for diverse applications. An architecture based on hierarchies of distributed multiprocessors provides the computing platform for a layered programming structure that models applications using software objects. These objects are designed to support model-based automated programming of robotic and machining devices, real-time sensor-based control, error handling, and robust communication

A FORTRAN-compatible program package for the control of CAMAC-systems by a PDP-11 (CA11-A/DEC, Type 1533A/BORER)

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lengauer, C.

1975-01-01

The described software serves for the control of CAMAC-systems by a PDP-11 Computer with one DEC CA11-A Branch-Driver, respectively up to ten BORER Type 1533A Single-Crate-Controllers under the Operating System DOS V08. The software consists of three parts: 1) a subroutine library for programming in FORTRAN, 2) a macro library for programming in Assembler (for time-critical problems), 3) a loadable CAMAC-Driver for controlling the system by input of single CAMAC-commands at the terminal. Programs which apply the first two parts can be written independently of the CAMAC-Controller used at runtime. (orig.) [de

Software V and V methods for a safety - grade programmable logic controller

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jang Yeol Kim; Young Jun Lee; Kyung Ho Cha; Se Woo Cheon; Jang Soo Lee; Kee Choon Kwon

2006-01-01

This paper addresses the Verification and Validation(V and V) process and the methodology for an embedded real time software of a safety-grade Programmable Logic Controller(PLC). This safety- grade PLC is being developed as one of the Korean Nuclear Instrumentation and Control System (KNICS) projects. KNICS projects are developing a Reactor Protection System(RPS) and an Engineered Safety Feature-Component Control System(ESF-CCS) as well as a safety-grade PLC. The safety-grade PLC will be a major component that encomposes the RPS systems and the ESF-CCS systems as nuclear instruments and control equipment. This paper describes the V and V guidelines and procedures, V and V environment, V and V process and methodology, and the V and V tools in the KNICS projects. Specifically, it describes the real-time operating system V and V experience which corresponds to the requirement analysis phase, design phase and the implementation and testing phase of the software development life cycle. Main activities of the V and V for the PLC system software are a technical evaluation, licensing suitability evaluation, inspection and traceability analysis, formal verification, software safety analysis, and a software configuration management. The proposed V and V methodology satisfies the Standard Review Plan(SRP)/Branch Technical Position(BTP)-14 criteria for the safety software in nuclear power plants. The proposed V and V methodology is going to be used to verify the upcoming software life cycle in the KNICS projects. (author)

Measurement of the area of venous ulcers using two software programs.

Science.gov (United States)

Eberhardt, Thaís Dresch; Lima, Suzinara Beatriz Soares de; Lopes, Luis Felipe Dias; Borges, Eline de Lima; Weiller, Teresinha Heck; Fonseca, Graziele Gorete Portella da

2016-12-19

to compare the measurement area of venous ulcers using AutoCAD(r) and Image Tool software. this was an assessment of reproducibility tests conducted in a angiology clinic of a university hospital. Data were collected from 21 patients with venous ulcers, in the period from March to July of 2015, using a collection form and photograph of wounds. Five nurses (evaluators) of the hospital skin wound study group participated. The wounds were measured using both software programs. Data were analyzed using intraclass correlation coefficient, concordance correlation coefficient and Bland-Altman analysis. The study met the ethical aspects in accordance with current legislation. the size of ulcers varied widely, however, without significant difference between the measurements; an excellent intraclass and concordance correlation was found between both software programs, which seem to be more accurate when measuring a wound area >10 cm². the use of both software programs is appropriate for measurement of venous ulcers, appearing to be more accurate when used to measure a wound area > 10 cm². comparar a mensuração de área de úlceras venosas por meio dos softwares AutoCAD(r) e Image Tool. trata-se de um estudo de avaliação de reprodutibilidade de testes, realizado em um ambulatório de angiologia de um hospital universitário. Os dados foram coletados de 21 pacientes com úlceras venosas, no período de março a julho de 2015, por meio de formulário de coleta e fotografia das feridas. Cinco enfermeiros (avaliadores) do Grupo de Estudos de Lesões de Pele do hospital participaram da pesquisa. As feridas foram mensuradas em ambos os softwares. Os dados foram analisados por meio do Coeficiente de correlação intraclasse, Coeficiente de correlação de concordância e procedimento de Bland e Altman. A pesquisa respeitou os aspectos éticos de acordo com a legislação vigente. os tamanhos das úlceras apresentaram grande amplitude, porém, sem diferença significativa entre

Universal Programmable Logic Controller Software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Mohd Arif Hamzah; Azhar Shamsudin; Fadil Ismail; Muhammad Nor Atan; Anwar Abdul Rahman

2013-01-01

Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) is an electronic hardware which is widely used in manufacturing or processing industries. It is also serve as the main control system hardware to run the production and manufacturing process. There are more than ten (10) well known company producing PLC hardware, with their own specialties, including the method of programming and language used. Malaysia Nuclear Agency have various plant and equipment, runs and control by PLC, such as Mintex Sinagama Plant, Alurtron Plant, and few laboratory equipment. Since all the equipment and plant are equipped with various brand or different manufacture of PLC, it creates difficulties to the supporting staff to master the control program. The same problems occur for new application of this hardware, since there no policies to purchase only one specific brand of PLC. (author)

Software testability and its application to avionic software

Science.gov (United States)

Voas, Jeffrey M.; Miller, Keith W.; Payne, Jeffery E.

1993-01-01

Randomly generated black-box testing is an established yet controversial method of estimating software reliability. Unfortunately, as software applications have required higher reliabilities, practical difficulties with black-box testing have become increasingly problematic. These practical problems are particularly acute in life-critical avionics software, where requirements of 10 exp -7 failures per hour of system reliability can translate into a probability of failure (POF) of perhaps 10 exp -9 or less for each individual execution of the software. This paper describes the application of one type of testability analysis called 'sensitivity analysis' to B-737 avionics software; one application of sensitivity analysis is to quantify whether software testing is capable of detecting faults in a particular program and thus whether we can be confident that a tested program is not hiding faults. We so 80 by finding the testabilities of the individual statements of the program, and then use those statement testabilities to find the testabilities of the functions and modules. For the B-737 system we analyzed, we were able to isolate those functions that are more prone to hide errors during system/reliability testing.

Remote control of DART spectrometer and data acquisition and dynamic send of the results through internet by using the JOB function of MEASTRO 32 software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Liu Guorong; Zhang Xiangyang; Liu Xuesheng; Ye Feng

2003-01-01

This paper introduced a method on remote control of DART spectrometer and data Acquisition and dynamic send of the results through Internet by using the JOB function of MEASTRO 32 software and a software programmed with VB. This gave an idea to realize the special networked measurement of spectrometer without the developed tool kit

Development of an object-oriented software based on fuzzy-logic for controlling temperatures in PAC experiments

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lapolli, Andre L.; Yamagishi, Sueli; Domienikan, Claudio; Schoueri, Roberto M.; Carbonari, Artur W.; Saxena, Rajendra N.

2009-01-01

The Hyperfine Interaction Laboratory at Instituto de Pesquisas Energeticas e Nucleares (IPEN) has been using Perturbed Angular Correlation (PAC) technique for studying material science for more than 20 years. One of the important aspects of the research involves the study of the behavior of measured properties of samples as a function of temperature. For temperatures higher than room temperature a small resistance furnace is used to heat the sample. The need to carry out the PAC measurement at predefined temperatures steps in a programmed manner is obvious. The present work describes a procedure for the furnace temperature control and automatic data acquisition at different temperatures based on fuzzy logic. The procedure consists in determining the linguistic input (temp, Δtemp) and output (pow) variables and their pertinence functions. After defining the variables, an object.oriented program is written in Java language which is an interface between principal data acquisition program and electronic temperature controller of the mini furnace. In addition to the implementation of the class that involves the fuzzy logic and classes with strategic algorithms defined for each temperature range there are classes of communication between systems based on modbus protocol RTU (Remote Terminal Unit) connected to serial interface RS-488. In this manner the applied technology for the development of software permits higher software life requiring only small alterations or implementation of classes in the use with new equipment. (author)

An Analysis of Earned Value Management Implementation Within the F-22 System Program Office's Software Development

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Dibert, John C; Velez, John C

2006-01-01

.... Acquisition Category ID programs like the US Air Force F-22 fighter program use EVM to manage their software development efforts, but has the program's implementation of EVM followed the industry...

Application range affected by software failures in safety relevant instrumentation and control systems of nuclear power plants; Auswirkungsbereiche von Softwarefehlern in sicherheitstechnisch wichtigen Einrichtungen von Kernkraftwerken

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Jopen, Manuela; Mbonjo, Herve; Sommer, Dagmar; Ulrich, Birte

2017-03-15

This report presents results that have been developed within a BMUB-funded research project (Promotion Code 3614R01304). The overall objective of this project was to broaden the knowledge base of GRS regarding software failures and their impact in software-based instrumentation and control (I and C) systems. To this end, relevant definitions and terms in standards and publications (DIN, IEEE standards, IAEA standards, NUREG publications) as well as in the German safety requirements for nuclear power plants were analyzed first. In particular, it was found that the term ''software fault'' is defined differently and partly contradictory in the considered literature sources. For this reason, a definition of software fault was developed on the basis of the software life cycle of software-based I and C systems within the framework of this project, which takes into account the various aspects relevant to software faults and their related effects. It turns out that software failures result from latent faults in a software-based control system, which can lead to a non-compliant behavior of a software-based I and C system. Hereby a distinction should be made between programming faults and specification faults. In a further step, operational experience with software failures in software-based I and C systems in nuclear facilities and in nonnuclear sector was investigated. The identified events were analyzed with regard to their cause and impacts and the analysis results were summarized. Based on the developed definition of software failure and on the COMPSIS-classification scheme for events related to software based I and C systems, the COCS-classification scheme was developed to classify events from operating experience with software failures, in which the events are classified according to the criteria ''cause'', ''affected system'', ''impact'' and ''CCF potential''. This

Computer-Aided Software Engineering - An approach to real-time software development

Science.gov (United States)

Walker, Carrie K.; Turkovich, John J.

1989-01-01

A new software engineering discipline is Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE), a technology aimed at automating the software development process. This paper explores the development of CASE technology, particularly in the area of real-time/scientific/engineering software, and a history of CASE is given. The proposed software development environment for the Advanced Launch System (ALS CASE) is described as an example of an advanced software development system for real-time/scientific/engineering (RT/SE) software. The Automated Programming Subsystem of ALS CASE automatically generates executable code and corresponding documentation from a suitably formatted specification of the software requirements. Software requirements are interactively specified in the form of engineering block diagrams. Several demonstrations of the Automated Programming Subsystem are discussed.

SEL's Software Process-Improvement Program

Science.gov (United States)

Basili, Victor; Zelkowitz, Marvin; McGarry, Frank; Page, Jerry; Waligora, Sharon; Pajerski, Rose

1995-01-01

The goals and operations of the Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL) is reviewed. For nearly 20 years the SEL has worked to understand, assess, and improve software and the development process within the production environment of the Flight Dynamics Division (FDD) of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The SEL was established in 1976 with the goals of reducing: (1) the defect rate of delivered software, (2) the cost of software to support flight projects, and (3) the average time to produce mission-support software. After studying over 125 projects of FDD, the results have guided the standards, management practices, technologies, and the training within the division. The results of the studies have been a 75 percent reduction in defects, a 50 percent reduction in cost, and a 25 percent reduction in development time. Over time the goals of SEL have been clarified. The goals are now stated as: (1) Understand baseline processes and product characteristics, (2) Assess improvements that have been incorporated into the development projects, (3) Package and infuse improvements into the standard SEL process. The SEL improvement goal is to demonstrate continual improvement of the software process by carrying out analysis, measurement and feedback to projects with in the FDD environment. The SEL supports the understanding of the process by study of several processes including, the effort distribution, and error detection rates. The SEL assesses and refines the processes. Once the assessment and refinement of a process is completed, the SEL packages the process by capturing the process in standards, tools and training.

The Legacy of Space Shuttle Flight Software

Science.gov (United States)

Hickey, Christopher J.; Loveall, James B.; Orr, James K.; Klausman, Andrew L.

2011-01-01

The initial goals of the Space Shuttle Program required that the avionics and software systems blaze new trails in advancing avionics system technology. Many of the requirements placed on avionics and software were accomplished for the first time on this program. Examples include comprehensive digital fly-by-wire technology, use of a digital databus for flight critical functions, fail operational/fail safe requirements, complex automated redundancy management, and the use of a high-order software language for flight software development. In order to meet the operational and safety goals of the program, the Space Shuttle software had to be extremely high quality, reliable, robust, reconfigurable and maintainable. To achieve this, the software development team evolved a software process focused on continuous process improvement and defect elimination that consistently produced highly predictable and top quality results, providing software managers the confidence needed to sign each Certificate of Flight Readiness (COFR). This process, which has been appraised at Capability Maturity Model (CMM)/Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 5, has resulted in one of the lowest software defect rates in the industry. This paper will present an overview of the evolution of the Primary Avionics Software System (PASS) project and processes over thirty years, an argument for strong statistical control of software processes with examples, an overview of the success story for identifying and driving out errors before flight, a case study of the few significant software issues and how they were either identified before flight or slipped through the process onto a flight vehicle, and identification of the valuable lessons learned over the life of the project.

Control and evaluation programs for TANSY-KM5

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Grosshoeg, G.; Aronsson, D.; Hoek, M.; Rydz, R.; Norberg, L.; Urholm, L.

1991-01-01

Our first task was to purchase a computer and to create a basic software library for the preliminary test of the components. Our choice was a Starburst system from CES. The computer was a PDP-11/70 on a chip. It is the same computer as the ones used by the auxiliary CAMAC crate controllers in the TANSY system. However, the host has a 256 kbyte memory instead of the 64 kbyte memory used in the crate controllers. The operation system is RSX11-M. It is a real time system with properties suitable for laboratory works. However, the computer works in 64 kbyte partitions which limits the size of the programs. Four program systems were written. The two first were one-parameter systems for amplitude and time measurements using the ADCs and TDCs which later should be included in the TANSY system. These systems were supplemented with two two-parameter systems, one for time and amplitude measurements and one for time measurements on 16 detectors simultaneously. The display capabilities of these program systems have been used extensively by the TANSY programs. The programs needed for the manipulation of the system give the user a possibility to manually run the system without any intervention from the normal CODAS control system. The programs have been used for calibration measurements as well as test of the TANSY system. The evaluation programs use the output file from a normal measurement. The data file may be tested for errors. The true events can be sorted into different configurations. The final one is the neutron energy sort program, which gives the neutron energy distribution

Consys Linear Control System Design Software Package

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Diamantidis, Z.

1987-01-01

This package is created in order to help engineers, researchers, students and all who work on linear control systems. The software includes all time and frequency domain analysises, spectral analysises and networks, active filters and regulators design aids. The programmes are written on Hewlett Packard computer in Basic 4.0

Software for ASS-500 based early warning system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lipinski, P.; Isajenko, K.

1998-01-01

The article describes the software for the management of early warning system based on ASS-500 station. The software can communicate with the central computer using TCP/IP protocol. This allows remote control of the station through modem or local area network connection. The article describes Windows based user interface of the program

Current state and prospects of the IBR-2M instrument control software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kirilov, A.S.

2011-01-01

The article is devoted to the main features and plans of future improvements of the Sonix + instrumental complex, which is used now to control experimental hardware at the IBR-2M spectrometers. The Sonix + software inherited basic solutions from the older Sonix system. In particular, those are the modular organization using special database for device control and reflection of the current system state, using script programming for the measured procedure. At the same time, some basic features were revised to make the system more unified, flexible and comfortable for the user. Main changes can be grouped as follows: structural enhancements, using the Python as a script language, GUI redesign and unification, remote supervision and instrument control via network. During the last years, this complex has been tested at some IBR-2 instruments (REMUR, NERA-PR) and on some instruments at other centers. We are planning to install it at the other instruments of IBR-2M as well

The W. M. Keck Telescope segmented primary mirror active control system software

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Cohen, R.W. (Lawrence Berkeley Lab., CA (USA) California Association for Research in Astronomy, Kamuela, HI (USA)); Andreae, S.; Biocca, A.K.; Jared, R.C.; Llacer, J.; Meng, J.D.; Minor, R.H.; Orayani, M. (Lawrence Berkeley Lab., CA (USA))

1989-07-01

The active control system (ACS) uses both parallel and distributed processing techniques to measure and control the positions of the 36 segments of the Keck Observatory Telescope primary mirror. The main function of the software is to maintain the mirror figure; to accomplish this goal the software uses a predictive, feed-forward'' mechanism which effectively increases the system bandwidth for the most important sources of perturbation. The software executes on a set of twelve 68000-family processors under the supervision of a VAX workstation. An array of nine parallel I/O processors collect and process data from 168 displacement sensors and transmit motion commands to 108 actuators. Three additional processors simultaneously compute actuator commands, monitor system performance, compute sensor control parameters and communicate with other observatory computers. The software is highly optimized for speed. 6 refs., 7 figs.

Software Considerations for Subscale Flight Testing of Experimental Control Laws

Science.gov (United States)

Murch, Austin M.; Cox, David E.; Cunningham, Kevin

2009-01-01

The NASA AirSTAR system has been designed to address the challenges associated with safe and efficient subscale flight testing of research control laws in adverse flight conditions. In this paper, software elements of this system are described, with an emphasis on components which allow for rapid prototyping and deployment of aircraft control laws. Through model-based design and automatic coding a common code-base is used for desktop analysis, piloted simulation and real-time flight control. The flight control system provides the ability to rapidly integrate and test multiple research control laws and to emulate component or sensor failures. Integrated integrity monitoring systems provide aircraft structural load protection, isolate the system from control algorithm failures, and monitor the health of telemetry streams. Finally, issues associated with software configuration management and code modularity are briefly discussed.

An Introduction to Quantitative Measures for Software Maintenance of Nuclear Power Plant

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jo, Hyun Jun; Seong, Poong Hyun

2007-01-01

The I and C system of NPP has changed from the analog system to the digital-based system using microcontrollers and software. Thus, software has become very important for NPP control system. The software life cycle is divided into the development and maintenance phase largely. Because poor software maintenance work introduces new errors and makes software much complex, we have to consider the effective maintenance methods for the reliability and maintainability of NPP software. Function Block Diagram (FBD) is a standard application programming language for the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) and currently being used in the development of a fully-digitalized reactor protection system (RPS) under the KNICS project. Therefore, the maintenance work will be of great importance in a few years. This paper studies on the measures which give quantitative information to software maintainer and manager before and after modification. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 briefly describes software maintenance types and model. In Section 3-5, we introduce the quantitative measures for software maintenance and characteristics of FBD program. A conclusion is provided in Section 6

Certainty in Stockpile Computing: Recommending a Verification and Validation Program for Scientific Software

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Lee, J.R.

1998-11-01

As computing assumes a more central role in managing the nuclear stockpile, the consequences of an erroneous computer simulation could be severe. Computational failures are common in other endeavors and have caused project failures, significant economic loss, and loss of life. This report examines the causes of software failure and proposes steps to mitigate them. A formal verification and validation program for scientific software is recommended and described.

Terra Harvest software architecture

Science.gov (United States)

Humeniuk, Dave; Klawon, Kevin

2012-06-01

Under the Terra Harvest Program, the DIA has the objective of developing a universal Controller for the Unattended Ground Sensor (UGS) community. The mission is to define, implement, and thoroughly document an open architecture that universally supports UGS missions, integrating disparate systems, peripherals, etc. The Controller's inherent interoperability with numerous systems enables the integration of both legacy and future UGS System (UGSS) components, while the design's open architecture supports rapid third-party development to ensure operational readiness. The successful accomplishment of these objectives by the program's Phase 3b contractors is demonstrated via integration of the companies' respective plug-'n'-play contributions that include controllers, various peripherals, such as sensors, cameras, etc., and their associated software drivers. In order to independently validate the Terra Harvest architecture, L-3 Nova Engineering, along with its partner, the University of Dayton Research Institute, is developing the Terra Harvest Open Source Environment (THOSE), a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) running on an embedded Linux Operating System. The Use Cases on which the software is developed support the full range of UGS operational scenarios such as remote sensor triggering, image capture, and data exfiltration. The Team is additionally developing an ARM microprocessor-based evaluation platform that is both energy-efficient and operationally flexible. The paper describes the overall THOSE architecture, as well as the design decisions for some of the key software components. Development process for THOSE is discussed as well.

SOFTWARE QUALITY ASSURANCE FOR EMERGENCY RESPONSE CONSEQUENCE ASSESSMENT MODELS AT DOE'S SAVANNAH RIVER SITE

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hunter, C

2007-01-01

The Savannah River National Laboratory's (SRNL) Atmospheric Technologies Group develops, maintains, and operates computer-based software applications for use in emergency response consequence assessment at DOE's Savannah River Site. These applications range from straightforward, stand-alone Gaussian dispersion models run with simple meteorological input to complex computational software systems with supporting scripts that simulate highly dynamic atmospheric processes. A software quality assurance program has been developed to ensure appropriate lifecycle management of these software applications. This program was designed to meet fully the overall structure and intent of SRNL's institutional software QA programs, yet remain sufficiently practical to achieve the necessary level of control in a cost-effective manner. A general overview of this program is described

How to Successfully Renovate a Controls System? - Lessons Learned from the Renovation of the CERN Injectors’ Controls Software

CERN Document Server

Kruk, G; Kulikova, O; Lezhebokov, V; Pace, M; Pera Mira, P; Roux, E; Wozniak, J Pawel

2014-01-01

Renovation of the control system of the CERN LHC injectors was initiated in 2007 in the scope of the Injector Controls Architecture (InCA) project. One of its main objectives was to homogenize the controls software across CERN accelerators and reuse as much as possible the existing modern sub-systems, such as the settings management used for the LHC. The project team created a platform that would permit coexistence and intercommunication between old and new components via a dedicated gateway, allowing a progressive replacement of the former. Dealing with a heterogeneous environment, with many diverse and interconnected modules, implemented using different technologies and programming languages, the team had to introduce all the modifications in the smoothest possible way, without causing machine downtime. After a brief description of the system architecture, the paper discusses the technical and non-technical sides of the renovation process such as validation and deployment methodology, operational applicatio...

The use of prime implicants in dependability analysis of software controlled systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yau, Michael; Apostolakis, George; Guarro, Sergio

1998-01-01

The behavior of software controlled systems is usually non-binary and dynamic. It is, thus, convenient to employ multi-valued logic to model these systems. Multi-valued logic functions can be used to represent the functional and temporal relationships between the software and hardware components. The resulting multi-valued logic model can be analyzed deductively, i.e. by tracking causality in reverse from undesirable 'top' events to identify faults that may be present in the system. The result of this deductive analysis is a set of prime implicants for a user-defined system top event. The prime implicants represent all the combinations of basic component conditions and software input conditions that may result in the top event; they are the extension to multi-valued logic of the concept of minimal cut sets that is used routinely in the analysis of binary fault trees. This paper discusses why prime implicants are needed in the dependability analysis of software controlled systems, how they are generated, and how they are used to identify faults in a software controlled system

The use of prime implicants in dependability analysis of software controlled systems

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Yau, Michael; Apostolakis, George; Guarro, Sergio

1998-11-01

The behavior of software controlled systems is usually non-binary and dynamic. It is, thus, convenient to employ multi-valued logic to model these systems. Multi-valued logic functions can be used to represent the functional and temporal relationships between the software and hardware components. The resulting multi-valued logic model can be analyzed deductively, i.e. by tracking causality in reverse from undesirable 'top' events to identify faults that may be present in the system. The result of this deductive analysis is a set of prime implicants for a user-defined system top event. The prime implicants represent all the combinations of basic component conditions and software input conditions that may result in the top event; they are the extension to multi-valued logic of the concept of minimal cut sets that is used routinely in the analysis of binary fault trees. This paper discusses why prime implicants are needed in the dependability analysis of software controlled systems, how they are generated, and how they are used to identify faults in a software controlled system.

Mitigating the controller performance bottlenecks in Software Defined Networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Caba, Cosmin Marius; Soler, José

2016-01-01

The centralization of the control plane decision logic in Software Defined Networking (SDN) has raised concerns regarding the performance of the SDN Controller (SDNC) when the network scales up. A number of solutions have been proposed in the literature to address these concerns. This paper...

Real-time software for the COMPASS tokamak plasma control

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Valcarcel, D.F.; Duarte, A.S.; Neto, A.; Carvalho, I.S.; Carvalho, B.B.; Fernandes, H.; Sousa, J.; Sartori, F.; Janky, F.; Cahyna, P.; Hron, M.; Panek, R.

2010-01-01

The COMPASS tokamak has started its operation recently in Prague and to meet the necessary operation parameters its real-time system, for data processing and control, must be designed for both flexibility and performance, allowing the easy integration of code from several developers and to guarantee the desired time cycle. For this purpose an Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture based real-time system has been deployed with a solution built on a multi-core x86 processor. It makes use of two software components: the BaseLib2 and the MARTe (Multithreaded Application Real-Time executor) real-time frameworks. The BaseLib2 framework is a generic real-time library with optimized objects for the implementation of real-time algorithms. This allowed to build a library of modules that process the acquired data and execute control algorithms. MARTe executes these modules in kernel space Real-Time Application Interface allowing to attain the required cycle time and a jitter of less than 1.5 μs. MARTe configuration and data storage are accomplished through a Java hardware client that connects to the FireSignal control and data acquisition software. This article details the implementation of the real-time system for the COMPASS tokamak, in particular the organization of the control code, the design and implementation of the communications with the actuators and how MARTe integrates with the FireSignal software.

Real-time software for the COMPASS tokamak plasma control

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Valcarcel, D.F., E-mail: danielv@ipfn.ist.utl.p [Associacao EURATOM/IST, Instituto de Plasmas e Fusao Nuclear - Laboratorio Associado, Instituto Superior Tecnico, P-1049-001 Lisboa (Portugal); Duarte, A.S.; Neto, A.; Carvalho, I.S.; Carvalho, B.B.; Fernandes, H.; Sousa, J. [Associacao EURATOM/IST, Instituto de Plasmas e Fusao Nuclear - Laboratorio Associado, Instituto Superior Tecnico, P-1049-001 Lisboa (Portugal); Sartori, F. [Euratom-UKAEA, Culham Science Centre, Abingdon, OX14 3DB Oxon (United Kingdom); Janky, F.; Cahyna, P.; Hron, M.; Panek, R. [Institute of Plasma Physics AS CR, v.v.i., Association EURATOM/IPP.CR, Za Slovankou 3, 182 00 Prague (Czech Republic)

2010-07-15

The COMPASS tokamak has started its operation recently in Prague and to meet the necessary operation parameters its real-time system, for data processing and control, must be designed for both flexibility and performance, allowing the easy integration of code from several developers and to guarantee the desired time cycle. For this purpose an Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture based real-time system has been deployed with a solution built on a multi-core x86 processor. It makes use of two software components: the BaseLib2 and the MARTe (Multithreaded Application Real-Time executor) real-time frameworks. The BaseLib2 framework is a generic real-time library with optimized objects for the implementation of real-time algorithms. This allowed to build a library of modules that process the acquired data and execute control algorithms. MARTe executes these modules in kernel space Real-Time Application Interface allowing to attain the required cycle time and a jitter of less than 1.5 {mu}s. MARTe configuration and data storage are accomplished through a Java hardware client that connects to the FireSignal control and data acquisition software. This article details the implementation of the real-time system for the COMPASS tokamak, in particular the organization of the control code, the design and implementation of the communications with the actuators and how MARTe integrates with the FireSignal software.

Prometheus Reactor I and C Software Development Methodology, for Action

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

T. Hamilton

2005-01-01

The purpose of this letter is to submit the Reactor Instrumentation and Control (I and C) software life cycle, development methodology, and programming language selections and rationale for project Prometheus to NR for approval. This letter also provides the draft Reactor I and C Software Development Process Manual and Reactor Module Software Development Plan to NR for information

To the problem of software development for two-sided communication system between an operator and computers in the automatic control system of elementary particle accelerators

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Asyaev, Yu.V.; Burtsev, V.L.; Makarov, V.V.; Nikitin, V.D.; Solov'ev, G.N.

1975-01-01

Principles, composition and basic characteristics of the software for a system of operators communication with minicomputers within the automatic accelerator control system are described. It is indicated that the external language of communication proposed in the system should meet the requirements for a provision of dialogue between the operator and the minicomputer operating in the real-time mode with an accelerator. There is a set of standard procedures allowing the operator to interact with the system in a sufficiently complete and flexible manner. These standard procedures are provided in the external operator's language in the form of a set of the control statements. The basic programs of the software system for communication are MONITOR, INTERPRETER and DRIVER programs. The MONITOR program algorithm employs the following principles - service of the input/output requests in the system is made on the relative priority basis: the maximum priority is assigned to operator's requests, the requests of the dispatcher and application programs are at a lower priority level

Experiment to evaluate software safety

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Soubies, B.; Henry, J.Y.

1994-01-01

The process of licensing nuclear power plants for operation consists of mandatory steps featuring detailed examination of the instrumentation and control system by the safety authorities, including softwares. The criticality of these softwares obliges the manufacturer to develop in accordance with the IEC 880 standard 'Computer software in nuclear power plant safety systems' issued by the International Electronic Commission. The evaluation approach, a two-stage assessment is described in detail. In this context, the IPSN (Institute of Protection and Nuclear Safety), the technical support body of the safety authority uses the MALPAS tool to analyse the quality of the programs. (R.P.). 4 refs

Tailorable software architectures in the accelerator control system environment

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Mejuev, Igor; Kumagai, Akira; Kadokura, Eiichi

2001-01-01

Tailoring is further evolution of an application after deployment in order to adapt it to requirements that were not accounted for in the original design. End-user tailorability has been extensively researched in applied computer science from HCl and software engineering perspectives. Tailorability allows coping with flexibility requirements, decreasing maintenance and development costs of software products. In general, dynamic or diverse software requirements constitute the need for implementing end-user tailorability in computer systems. In accelerator physics research the factor of dynamic requirements is especially important, due to frequent software and hardware modifications resulting in correspondingly high upgrade and maintenance costs. In this work we introduce the results of feasibility study on implementing end-user tailorability in the software for accelerator control system, considering the design and implementation of distributed monitoring application for 12 GeV KEK Proton Synchrotron as an example. The software prototypes used in this work are based on a generic tailoring platform (VEDICI), which allows decoupling of tailoring interfaces and runtime components. While representing a reusable application-independent framework, VEDICI can be potentially applied for tailoring of arbitrary compositional Web-based applications

Automated Source Code Analysis to Identify and Remove Software Security Vulnerabilities: Case Studies on Java Programs

OpenAIRE

Natarajan Meghanathan

2013-01-01

The high-level contribution of this paper is to illustrate the development of generic solution strategies to remove software security vulnerabilities that could be identified using automated tools for source code analysis on software programs (developed in Java). We use the Source Code Analyzer and Audit Workbench automated tools, developed by HP Fortify Inc., for our testing purposes. We present case studies involving a file writer program embedded with features for password validation, and ...

The control software framework of the web base

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Nakatani, Takeshi; Inamura, Yasuhiro; Ito, Takayoshi; Otomo, Toshiya

2015-01-01

Web browsers are one of the most platform-independent user interfaces. In particular, web pages created using responsive web design (RWD) are available for use on desktop and laptop computers, as well as tablet terminals and smart phones. We developed a common software framework, IROHA, for the instrument control system in the Materials and Life Science Experimental Facility at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex to build a flexible and scalable system by adopting XML/HTTP. However, its user interface was platform-dependent, and we wanted it to be more user-friendly. In 2013, we developed the prototype of a new software framework, IROHA2, comprising several device control servers and an instrument management server, retaining the flexibility and scalability of IROHA. We also adopted the Bootstrap framework to create an RWD user interface for these servers. (author)

Calculator: A Hardware Design, Math and Software Programming Project Base Learning

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

F. Criado

2015-03-01

Full Text Available This paper presents the implementation by the students of a complex calculator in hardware. This project meets hardware design goals, and also highly motivates them to use competences learned in others subjects. The learning process, associated to System Design, is hard enough because the students have to deal with parallel execution, signal delay, synchronization … Then, to strengthen the knowledge of hardware design a methodology as project based learning (PBL is proposed. Moreover, it is also used to reinforce cross subjects like math and software programming. This methodology creates a course dynamics that is closer to a professional environment where they will work with software and mathematics to resolve the hardware design problems. The students design from zero the functionality of the calculator. They are who make the decisions about the math operations that it is able to resolve it, and also the operands format or how to introduce a complex equation into the calculator. This will increase the student intrinsic motivation. In addition, since the choices may have consequences on the reliability of the calculator, students are encouraged to program in software the decisions about how implement the selected mathematical algorithm. Although math and hardware design are two tough subjects for students, the perception that they get at the end of the course is quite positive.

Service-oriented architecture for the ARGOS instrument control software

Science.gov (United States)

Borelli, J.; Barl, L.; Gässler, W.; Kulas, M.; Rabien, Sebastian

2012-09-01

The Advanced Rayleigh Guided ground layer Adaptive optic System, ARGOS, equips the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) with a constellation of six rayleigh laser guide stars. By correcting atmospheric turbulence near the ground, the system is designed to increase the image quality of the multi-object spectrograph LUCIFER approximately by a factor of 3 over a field of 4 arc minute diameter. The control software has the critical task of orchestrating several devices, instruments, and high level services, including the already existing adaptive optic system and the telescope control software. All these components are widely distributed over the telescope, adding more complexity to the system design. The approach used by the ARGOS engineers is to write loosely coupled and distributed services under the control of different ownership systems, providing a uniform mechanism to offer, discover, interact and use these distributed capabilities. The control system counts with several finite state machines, vibration and flexure compensation loops, and safety mechanism, such as interlocks, aircraft, and satellite avoidance systems.

Software for FASTBUS and Motorola 68K based readout controllers for data acquisition

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pordes, R.; Bernett, M.; Dorries, T.; Haire, M.; Moore, C.; Oleynik, G.; Votava, M.

1989-01-01

Many High Energy Physics experiments at Fermilab are now including FASTBUS front-ends in their data acquisition systems. The requirements on controllers to readout and control these FASTBUS systems are increasing in complexity and speed. The Data Acquisition Software Group has designed general software for front end 68Κ processor boards housed in FASTBUS or VME to meet these needs. The first implementation has been developed for the General Purpose FASTBUS Master (GPM). This software is being ported to the FASTBUS Smart Crate Controller under development at Fermilab. The software is designed, using structured analysis tools and coding in C, to be easily portable in the future to new processor boards. As part of their extended support for FASTBUS, they have enhanced their software for the intelligent LeCroy 1821 FASTBUS interface and implemented the FASTBUS standard routines for the VAX/VMS operating system

Software and control system for the VLT Survey Telescope

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Schipani, P; Marty, L; Dall'Ora, M; D'Orsi, S; Argomedo, J; Arcidiacono, C; Farinato, J; Magrin, D; Ragazzoni, R; Umbriaco, G

2013-01-01

The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) has started the regular operations in 2011 after a successful commissioning at Cerro Paranal (Chile), the site which hosts the best facilities for optical astronomy operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). After a short description of the instrument, this paper mainly focuses on the telescope control software, which is in charge of the real-time control of the hardware and of the overall coordination of the operations, including pointing and tracking, active optics and presets. We describe the main features of the software implementation in the context of the ESO observatory standards, and the goals reached during the commissioning phase and in the first year of operations.

Overview of the next generation of Fermilab collider software

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hendricks, B.; Joshel, R.

1992-01-01

Fermilab is entering an era of operating a more complex collider facility. In addition, new operator workstations are available that have increased capabilities. The task of providing updated software in this new environment precipitated a project called Colliding Beam Software (CBS). It was soon evident that a new approach was needed for developing console software. Hence CBS, although a common acronym, is too narrow a description. A new generation of the application program subroutine library has been created to enhance the existing programming environment with a set of value added tools. Several key Collider applications were written that exploit CBS tools. This paper will discuss the new tools and the underlying change in methodology in application program development for accelerator control at Fermilab. (author)

From Software Development to Software Assembly

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Sneed, Harry M.; Verhoef, Chris

2016-01-01

The lack of skilled programming personnel and the growing burden of maintaining customized software are forcing organizations to quit producing their own software. It's high time they turned to ready-made, standard components to fulfill their business requirements. Cloud services might be one way to

Object oriented programming techniques applied to device access and control

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Goetz, A.; Klotz, W.D.; Meyer, J.

1992-01-01

In this paper a model, called the device server model, has been presented for solving the problem of device access and control faced by all control systems. Object Oriented Programming techniques were used to achieve a powerful yet flexible solution. The model provides a solution to the problem which hides device dependancies. It defines a software framework which has to be respected by implementors of device classes - this is very useful for developing groupware. The decision to implement remote access in the root class means that device servers can be easily integrated in a distributed control system. A lot of the advantages and features of the device server model are due to the adoption of OOP techniques. The main conclusion that can be drawn from this paper is that 1. the device access and control problem is adapted to being solved with OOP techniques, 2. OOP techniques offer a distinct advantage over traditional programming techniques for solving the device access problem. (J.P.N.)

Caesy: A software tool for computer-aided engineering

Science.gov (United States)

Wette, Matt

1993-01-01

A new software tool, Caesy, is described. This tool provides a strongly typed programming environment for research in the development of algorithms and software for computer-aided control system design. A description of the user language and its implementation as they currently stand are presented along with a description of work in progress and areas of future work.

Unix Philosophy and the Real World: Control Software for Humanoid Robots

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Neil Thomas Dantam

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Robot software combines the challenges of general purpose and real-time software, requiring complex logic and bounded resource use. Physical safety, particularly for dynamic systems such as humanoid robots, depends on correct software. General purpose computation has converged on unix-like operating systems -- standardized as POSIX, the Portable Operating System Interface -- for devices from cellular phones to supercomputers. The modular, multi-process design typical of POSIX applications is effective for building complex and reliable software. Absent from POSIX, however, is an interproccess communication mechanism that prioritizes newer data as typically desired for control of physical systems. We address this need in the Ach communication library which provides suitable semantics and performance for real-time robot control. Although initially designed for humanoid robots, Ach has broader applicability to complex mechatronic devices -- humanoid and otherwise -- that require real-time coupling of sensors, control, planning, and actuation. The initial user space implementation of Ach was limited in the ability to receive data from multiple sources. We remove this limitation by implementing Ach as a Linux kernel module, enabling Ach's high-performance and latest-message-favored semantics within conventional POSIX communication pipelines. We discuss how these POSIX interfaces and design principles apply to robot software, and we present a case study using the Ach kernel module for communication on the Baxter robot.

Control system software, simulation, and robotic applications

Science.gov (United States)

Frisch, Harold P.

1991-01-01

All essential existing capabilities needed to create a man-machine interaction dynamics and performance (MMIDAP) capability are reviewed. The multibody system dynamics software program Order N DISCOS will be used for machine and musculo-skeletal dynamics modeling. The program JACK will be used for estimating and animating whole body human response to given loading situations and motion constraints. The basic elements of performance (BEP) task decomposition methodologies associated with the Human Performance Institute database will be used for performance assessment. Techniques for resolving the statically indeterminant muscular load sharing problem will be used for a detailed understanding of potential musculotendon or ligamentous fatigue, pain, discomfort, and trauma. The envisioned capacity is to be used for mechanical system design, human performance assessment, extrapolation of man/machine interaction test data, biomedical engineering, and soft prototyping within a concurrent engineering (CE) system.

Software quality assurance (SQA) for Savannah River reactors

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Schaumann, C.M.

1990-01-01

Over the last 25 years, the Savannah River Site (SRS) has developed a strong Software Quality Assurance (SQA) program. It provides the information and management controls required of a high quality auditable system. The SRS SQA program provides the framework to meet the requirements in increasing regulation.

LabVIEW-based control software for para-hydrogen induced polarization instrumentation.

Science.gov (United States)

Agraz, Jose; Grunfeld, Alexander; Li, Debiao; Cunningham, Karl; Willey, Cindy; Pozos, Robert; Wagner, Shawn

2014-04-01

The elucidation of cell metabolic mechanisms is the modern underpinning of the diagnosis, treatment, and in some cases the prevention of disease. Para-Hydrogen induced polarization (PHIP) enhances magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) signals over 10,000 fold, allowing for the MRI of cell metabolic mechanisms. This signal enhancement is the result of hyperpolarizing endogenous substances used as contrast agents during imaging. PHIP instrumentation hyperpolarizes Carbon-13 ((13)C) based substances using a process requiring control of a number of factors: chemical reaction timing, gas flow, monitoring of a static magnetic field (Bo), radio frequency (RF) irradiation timing, reaction temperature, and gas pressures. Current PHIP instruments manually control the hyperpolarization process resulting in the lack of the precise control of factors listed above, resulting in non-reproducible results. We discuss the design and implementation of a LabVIEW based computer program that automatically and precisely controls the delivery and manipulation of gases and samples, monitoring gas pressures, environmental temperature, and RF sample irradiation. We show that the automated control over the hyperpolarization process results in the hyperpolarization of hydroxyethylpropionate. The implementation of this software provides the fast prototyping of PHIP instrumentation for the evaluation of a myriad of (13)C based endogenous contrast agents used in molecular imaging.

LabVIEW-based control software for para-hydrogen induced polarization instrumentation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Agraz, Jose; Grunfeld, Alexander; Li, Debiao; Cunningham, Karl; Willey, Cindy; Pozos, Robert; Wagner, Shawn

2014-01-01

The elucidation of cell metabolic mechanisms is the modern underpinning of the diagnosis, treatment, and in some cases the prevention of disease. Para-Hydrogen induced polarization (PHIP) enhances magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) signals over 10 000 fold, allowing for the MRI of cell metabolic mechanisms. This signal enhancement is the result of hyperpolarizing endogenous substances used as contrast agents during imaging. PHIP instrumentation hyperpolarizes Carbon-13 ( 13 C) based substances using a process requiring control of a number of factors: chemical reaction timing, gas flow, monitoring of a static magnetic field (B o ), radio frequency (RF) irradiation timing, reaction temperature, and gas pressures. Current PHIP instruments manually control the hyperpolarization process resulting in the lack of the precise control of factors listed above, resulting in non-reproducible results. We discuss the design and implementation of a LabVIEW based computer program that automatically and precisely controls the delivery and manipulation of gases and samples, monitoring gas pressures, environmental temperature, and RF sample irradiation. We show that the automated control over the hyperpolarization process results in the hyperpolarization of hydroxyethylpropionate. The implementation of this software provides the fast prototyping of PHIP instrumentation for the evaluation of a myriad of 13 C based endogenous contrast agents used in molecular imaging

A computer program to automatically control the multi leaf collimator; Un programa informatico para el control automatico del colimador multilamina

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Sanchez Galiano, P.; Crelgo Alonso, D.; Gonzalez Sancho, J. M.; Fernandez Garcia, J.; Vivanco Parellada, J.

2012-07-01

A computer program to automatically analyze strip test images for MLC leaf positioning quality assurance was developed and assessed. The program is fed with raw individual segment images in DICOM format supplied by the accelerator software and it automatically carries out all the steps in the leaf positioning quality control test (image merging, image analysis, storing and reporting). A comprehensive description of the software, that allows a relatively easy implementation, is shown. To check the performance of the program, a series of test fields with intentionally introduced errors were used. The obtained Measurement uncertainty of any individual leaf position was lower than 0.15 mm with gantry at 0 degree centigrade. At another gantry angles (90 degree centigrade, 180 degree centigrade and 270 degree centigrade) the dispersion of the measurements was larger, specially towards the external positions of the leafs, probably due to a slight rotation of the EPID caused by gravity. That reduces the useful area of the MLC to control when gantry angles different from 0 degree centigrade are used. In conclusion, this technique is fast enough to be carried out in a daily basis being also very precise and reliable. (Author)

Beginning software engineering

CERN Document Server

Stephens, Rod

2015-01-01

Beginning Software Engineering demystifies the software engineering methodologies and techniques that professional developers use to design and build robust, efficient, and consistently reliable software. Free of jargon and assuming no previous programming, development, or management experience, this accessible guide explains important concepts and techniques that can be applied to any programming language. Each chapter ends with exercises that let you test your understanding and help you elaborate on the chapter's main concepts. Everything you need to understand waterfall, Sashimi, agile, RAD, Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming, and many other development models is inside!

Methods of software V and V for a programmable logic controller in NPPs

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kim, Jang Yeol; Lee, Young Jun; Cha, Kyung Ho; Cheon, Se Woo; Son, Han Seong; Lee, Jang Soo; Kwon, Kee Choon

2004-01-01

This paper addresses the Verification and Validation (V and V) process and methodology for embedded real time software of a safety-grade Programmable Logic Controller(PLC). This safety-grade PLC is being developed in the Korea Nuclear Instrumentation and Control System (KNICS) projects. KNICS projects are developing a Reactor Protection System(RPS) and an Engineered Safety Feature-Component Control System (ESF-CCS) as well as safety-grade PLC. Safety-grade PLC will be a major component that composes the RPS systems and ESF-CCS systems as nuclear instruments and control equipments. This paper describes the V and V guidelines and procedure, V and V environment, V and V process and methodology, and the V and V tools by the KNICS projects. Specially, it describes the real-time operating system V and V experience which corresponds to the requirement analysis phase of the software development life cycle. Main activities of the real-time operating system Software Requirement Specification(SRS) V and V of the PLC are the technical evaluation, licensing suitability evaluation, inspection and traceability analysis, formal verification, software safety analysis, and software configuration management. The proposed V and V methodology satisfies the Standard Review Plan(SRP)/Branch Technical Position(BTP)-14(MOST-KSRG 7/Appendix 15 in Korea will be issued soon) criteria for the safety software in nuclear power plants. The proposed V and V methodology is going to verify the upcoming software life cycle in the KNICS projects. (author)

Methods of Run-Time Error Detection in Distributed Process Control Software

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Drejer, N.

In this thesis, methods of run-time error detection in application software for distributed process control is designed. The error detection is based upon a monitoring approach in which application software is monitored by system software during the entire execution. The thesis includes definition...... and constraint evaluation is designed for the modt interesting error types. These include: a) semantical errors in data communicated between application tasks; b) errors in the execution of application tasks; and c) errors in the timing of distributed events emitted by the application software. The design...... of error detection methods includes a high level software specification. this has the purpose of illustrating that the designed can be used in practice....

High-Level software requirements specification for the TWRS controlled baseline database system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Spencer, S.G.

1998-01-01

This Software Requirements Specification (SRS) is an as-built document that presents the Tank Waste Remediation System (TWRS) Controlled Baseline Database (TCBD) in its current state. It was originally known as the Performance Measurement Control System (PMCS). Conversion to the new system name has not occurred within the current production system. Therefore, for simplicity, all references to TCBD are equivalent to PMCS references. This SRS will reference the PMCS designator from this point forward to capture the as-built SRS. This SRS is written at a high-level and is intended to provide the design basis for the PMCS. The PMCS was first released as the electronic data repository for cost, schedule, and technical administrative baseline information for the TAAS Program. During its initial development, the PMCS was accepted by the customer, TARS Business Management, with no formal documentation to capture the initial requirements

NASA's Software Safety Standard

Science.gov (United States)

Ramsay, Christopher M.

2007-01-01

NASA relies more and more on software to control, monitor, and verify its safety critical systems, facilities and operations. Since the 1960's there has hardly been a spacecraft launched that does not have a computer on board that will provide command and control services. There have been recent incidents where software has played a role in high-profile mission failures and hazardous incidents. For example, the Mars Orbiter, Mars Polar Lander, the DART (Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology), and MER (Mars Exploration Rover) Spirit anomalies were all caused or contributed to by software. The Mission Control Centers for the Shuttle, ISS, and unmanned programs are highly dependant on software for data displays, analysis, and mission planning. Despite this growing dependence on software control and monitoring, there has been little to no consistent application of software safety practices and methodology to NASA's projects with safety critical software. Meanwhile, academia and private industry have been stepping forward with procedures and standards for safety critical systems and software, for example Dr. Nancy Leveson's book Safeware: System Safety and Computers. The NASA Software Safety Standard, originally published in 1997, was widely ignored due to its complexity and poor organization. It also focused on concepts rather than definite procedural requirements organized around a software project lifecycle. Led by NASA Headquarters Office of Safety and Mission Assurance, the NASA Software Safety Standard has recently undergone a significant update. This new standard provides the procedures and guidelines for evaluating a project for safety criticality and then lays out the minimum project lifecycle requirements to assure the software is created, operated, and maintained in the safest possible manner. This update of the standard clearly delineates the minimum set of software safety requirements for a project without detailing the implementation for those