A Lean and Highly-automated Model-Based Software Development Process Based on DO-178C/DO-331
This addresses the problem of making safety-critical software development accessible and efficient for startups in emerging aviation domains, though it is incremental as it adapts existing standards rather than introducing a new paradigm.
The paper tackles the challenge of applying safety-critical software standards like DO-178C/DO-331 to resource-constrained startups in urban air mobility by presenting a custom, lean, and highly automated workflow based on a subset of objectives, resulting in higher quality software with better maintainability for research and prototype aircraft.
The emergence of a global market for urban air mobility and unmanned aerial systems has attracted many startups across the world. These organizations have little training or experience in the traditional processes used in civil aviation for the development of software and electronic hardware. They are also constrained in the resources they can allocate for dedicated teams of professionals to follow these standardized processes. To fill this gap, this paper presents a custom workflow based on a subset of objectives derived from the foundational standards for safety critical software DO-178C/DO-331. The selection of objectives from the standards is based on the importance, degree of automation, and reusability of specific objectives. This custom workflow is intended to establish a lean and highly automated development life cycle resulting in higher quality software with better maintainability characteristics for research and prototype aircraft. It can also be proposed as means of compliance for software of certain applications such as unmanned aircraft systems, urban air mobility and general aviation. By producing the essential set of development and verification artifacts, the custom workflow also provides a scalable basis for potential future certification in compliance with DO-178C/DO-331. The custom workflow is demonstrated in a case study of an Autopilot Manual Disconnection System.