CERTAINTY will push forward the limits of the current approaches, by analysing uncertainty at design time, for each particular application, thereby safely reducing the margins and more efficiently using resources. This paradigm shift will have several impacts through strengthened capabilities, in design and operation of large-scale advanced embedded complex systems, in areas like energy, transport, and production. Competitiveness will derive directly from:
In the long run, it is expected that CERTAINTY will cut embedded system production costs nearly by half.
CERTAINTY will contribute to International cooperation creating mutual benefits which will further European interests on focused technical topics: CERTAINTY will manifest and increase mixed criticality and safety technology as a strong competence within EU for the future and will be particularly active in standardisation bodies related to avionics.
A characteristic for automation industry is that the developed systems will be deployed in all over the world. This makes it challenging to organise the logistics for maintenance and upgrading of systems. CERTAINTY will enable the integration of functionality on separate circuit boards into on smaller board. This will substantially decrease the weight and size of the system and thus decrease the transportation costs and as a consequence also the environmental impact of the transportation.
A problem in upgrading of systems is that not only have the new parts to be delivered, but also often an installation team has to travel to the location. CERTAINTY will allow upgrading of the system remotely by replacing parts of the software. This will again decrease the need for travel and thus also decrease the environmental impact
In the aerospace industry, multi-core processors are one very important foundation for the ability to integrate given the stringent environmental constraints and possible power dissipation solutions unattainable with current solutions. This is currently not possible due to certification issues, the central problem to be addressed in CERTAINTY .
Moreover, the integration of decentralized systems into integrated modular avionics is a very important step in reduction of weight due to reduction of different separate computing modules into less often centralized computing bays. In the context of weight reduction, each even very small weight reduction can lead to significant fuel savings over the lifetime of an aircraft and increase the competitiveness of this aircraft compared to international competitors.
The average deviation from optimum flight profile was reported to be 12.3% in 2008. The objective by 2020 is to reduce this average deviation to 8.7%. This is expected to save 140 kg fuel per flight, hence a global saving of 2.3 million tons, i.e., 1000 M€.
An interesting issue for the automotive industry is the increased computation power provided by looser segregation of mixed critical functions on multi-core processors. This can in the future be exploited to implement more complex engine control algorithms that will lower the CO2 production directly in the engine
Key features
- Up to 50% production cost reduction (long run) - Drastic reduction of embedded components - Less power consumption and CO2 emission for a greener environment |
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 288175
DR. Madeleine FAUGÈRE
THALES S.A.