META: Next Gen Infantry Fighting Vehicle Design Tools Released to Open-Source

 

META source code (as of the end of FANG 1)

The ultimate goal of the META program is to dramatically improve the existing systems engineering, integration, and testing process for defense systems. META is not predicated on one particular alternative approach, metric, technique or tool. Broadly speaking, however, it aims to develop model-based design methods for cyber-physical systems far more complex and heterogeneous than those to which such methods are applied today; to combine these methods with a rigorous deployment of hierarchical abstractions throughout the system architecture; to optimize system design with respect to an observable, quantitative measure of complexity for the entire cyber-physical systems; and to apply probabilistic formal methods to the system verification problem, thereby dramatically reducing the need for expensive real-world testing and design iteration.   The top-level technical objectives of the META program are as follows:  

• Develop a practical, observable metric of complexity for cyber-physical systems to enable cyber-vs-physical implementation trades and to improve parametrization of cost and schedule;
   
• Develop a quantitative metric of adaptability associated with a given system architecture that can support trade-offs between adaptability, complexity, performance, cost, schedule, risk, and other system attributes;
   
• Develop a structured design flow employing hierarchical abstraction and model-based composition of electromechanical and software components;
   
• Develop a component and manufacturing model library for a given airborne or ground vehicle systems domain through extensive characterization of desirable and spurious interactions, dynamics, and properties of all constituent components down to the numbered part level; develop context models to reflect various operational environments;
   
• Develop a verification flow that generates probabilistic "certificates of correctness" for the entire cyber-physical system based on stochastic formal methods, scaling linearly with problem size;
   
• Apply the above framework and toolset to design, manufacture, integrate, and verify a ground vehicle of substantial complexity 5X faster than with a conventional design/build/test approach.

 

 

* source code available here