In the sea and the sky the IT that defends safety
Naval consoles for military frigates
Monitoring the complexity of the parameters of a ship and its surrounding environment while offering easy and quick control has been the main challenge for the design and development of the naval Combat Management System (CMS) console. It is based on a proprietary framework and was built using object-oriented technology, using innovative rapid prototyping & design tools, which enabled the ergonomics of the interfaces, man-machine interaction and reuse of the code to be maximized.
ATC air traffic control system console
In order to ensure the safety of the vehicles and people in air transport, the ATC (Air Traffic Control) operators impose the mantra of innovation in tradition on their suppliers. The challenge in developing these consoles is to maintain man-machine interaction, which must necessarily respect a strict set of graphical best practices and, at the same time, guarantee the state of the art in terms of performance and safety. The application, which is based on proprietary frameworks, uses graphical libraries capable of using the latest graphics processors for presenting maps and traces and a proprietary graphical library developed ad hoc for the application domain.
Control and planning 3D Console Viewer
The correct perception of the operating scenario – the Common Operational Picture (COP) - is fundamentally important for the management and coordination of the mission that the military commanders have to plan. The challenge in the development of these consoles is to manage complex symbols (full of implied information), both 2D and 3D views of the area and a high-performance decision support algorithms.
High-performance coastal supervision console
The military coastal supervision command and control system console built using the design pattern technique adopts the latest-generation graphics engine in all phases of presentation of the tactics and potential of the modern GPUs, which computerize the graphics and the processing of the geographical data.
Web Based console of the marine supervision system
The evolution of web technologies have also affected sectors such as that of mission critical systems, more closely related - for performance reasons - to desktop applications. To satisfy the need for producing applications distributed geographically, Exprivia has managed to support this major technological change entirely through its ability to combine its thirty years of domination with its great technical culture. The Marine supervision console is based on a service web architecture, with new-generation graphics libraries and natively integrates the web-based mapping framework.
EGNOS CCF MMI (Man Machine Interface) command and control console
Construction of the command and control workstation of the Central Control Facility of the EGNOS system (pilot project for the European GPS Galileo system). Command and control system for interfacing data coming from the land stations and the satellites with the control servers to monitor and improve the performance of the land navigation system (GPS).
Control of the ICARUS robot for the ultrasonic testing of avionic components
ICARUS computerized control system was built for the Italian Aerospace Research Centre for non-destructive testing of aerospace components using ultrasonic methods. The pilot system consists of ten motor-driven axes for high-precision movements (hundredths of a millimetre) of a two-arm mechanical device each with five degrees of freedom, three linear and two rotary. On the basis of points sampled manually, an interpolation algorithm reconstructs the 3D shapes of the objects, thus allowing the surfaces to be scanned automatically.
Multi-sensor tracking for the naval traffic control systems
Production of the multi-sensor tracking algorithm for naval traffic control systems for tracking ships. The new-generation algorithm standardizes the format of the input data to natively integrate the data transmitted by the tracking sensors in the system. The position of the traces is calculated using the data from several sensors, using an algorithm based on the type of sensor (Radar, GPS, Direction Finder and others), the quality of the sensor, the distance between the sensor and the target, the angle of the target with respect to the sensor, poor visibility cones (interference), correction of land surface curvature, etc.
Real-time middleware for the aircraft carrier combat system
The technology, completely based on an Open Source, used for the implementation of the infrastructure and distribution middleware, has guaranteed complete abstraction and portability to several HW/SW platforms of the communication system and all components operating in the Combat Management System. The common services implemented include Time Management (time distribution management also used to synchronize naval operations); Geographical and Mathematical System (library for processing and converting geographical data on the position of the ship); System Configuration & Management (node supervisor that manages system start-up, HW/SW faults and the master election policies in a fault tolerant redundant configuration).
Fault management
Development and integration of the system for monitoring the operation of the shelters (cabins assembled on military trucks) of the weapon system for land defence and the diagnostics necessary to identify and automatically isolate faults in the main components of the shelter, such as Workstations, Coordinator Server, Communication Subsystem (voice and data) and Unit Power Supply.
Virtualization of proprietary operating systems
The development of Virtualization of the real-time operating system MARA OS for the main standard platforms (Unix, Linux and Windows) allowed the "automatic porting" of an entire air traffic control system without editing the source programs of the applications. All the functions of the Kernel were implemented using the standard calls of POSIX 1003.4 Real-Time extension, replicating the main services of the operating system: Functions and Processes, Memory Manager, Path Manager, Real-Time Clock, Semaphores and Lock. The I/O system developed consists of 5 servers that enable the applications to perform the operations asynchronously on serial devices, disks and networks: TCP, UDP, File Manager System, Serial Device Driver, multi-line communication on synchronous I/O devices based on protocols in the X25, HDLC and LAPB families.
Compilers and interpreters for non-standard environments
Production of a translator (Cross-Compiler) that converts the proprietary computer assembler into a standard system assembler. The use of this translator has brought a significant increase in performance required by the new naval defence systems. Development of a programmable interpreter in a Basic-like language has enabled the graphics library of the console to be tested dynamically without having to implement static tests that are hard to transfer to critical environments. The possibility of implementing new user routines without having to modify the source code makes it a tool capable of testing all types of devices, databases, etc. Development of the parametric translator for the parametric formatting and deformatting of messages of the automatic combat management system and the Language interpreter developed 'ad hoc' to describe the message decoding rules, has enabled new types of message to be implemented without modifying the sources.
Drivers and simulators for standard and non-standard boards and devices
Finger driver (Windows) for managing the Finger custom board that controls the fingerprint recognition devices. Management of the DMA for downloading the images of the Phisik Instrumente driver (Windows): a driver for managing the boards that control micrometric movement axes manufactured by the German company Physik Instrumente in Windows. HSP driver (Sun Solaris) for controlling the HSP I/O board based on Transputer in the Sun Solaris environment. The driver controls communication in DMA through the board’s four asynchronous links. Streaming tape hardware device simulators: simulator of the software driver and the hardware device (streaming tape). Simulator of the transportable cartridge unit DMD hardware device installed on military helicopters.
