Rotorcraft Pilot’s Associate Software Development Process

The Rotorcraft Pilot’s Associate program is developing decision aids for the scout/attack rotorcraft The program is sponsored by the U.S. Army Aviation and Applied Technology Directorate, Fort Eustis, VA. The decision aids include data fusion, situation assessment, defensive measures, flight or route planning, communications planning, attack planning, reconnaissance planning and mission execution aids. In addition a cockpit information manager aids in the presentation of information to two crew members. The RPA software development process is based on standard software practices but was tailored to the RPA domain and program needs. This paper describes the software development process from conceptual design to software requirement specification. A set of templates and a system architecture are used to guide the requirements development and software design across a team of contractor and government participants. These templates were derived from the domain and the goal for a pilot centered, “associate” system. They also provide a consistent view or model of the system behavior regardless of the stage of development.