RapiCover’s advanced features accelerate the certification of military UAV Engine Control

MBE Systems™ are leaders in the design, development and manufacture of integrated engine management and powertrain control systems for the world’s automotive, aviation and marine industries. MBE are based in Gloucestershire in the UK and their specialist teams of electronic, software and control engineers have been providing expert solutions since 1987.

MBE were awarded the contract to develop a Full Authority Digital Engine Control (FADEC) system for a US Department of Defence (DoD) funded Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) System. Structural coverage analysis was a key part of the verification workflow that MBE needed to perform to ensure that the software was robust and thoroughly tested.

By selecting RapiCover, MBE chose a solution that is proven for the highest-criticality aerospace projects and had the advanced features they needed to integrate into their verification processes.

Summary

The challenge

Collection of structural coverage metrics for a military UAV FADEC system
50% max usage requirement on a target with constrained RAM

The solution

Integration of the RapiCover tool for structural coverage analysis
Deployment of a highly efficient data collection strategy for a codebase written in C

The benefits

RapiCover’s low on-target overheads allowed MBE Systems to reduce the number of builds needed to collect coverage results
Advanced structural coverage analysis features streamlined MBE’s verification workflow
Responsive and efficient customer support

The challenge

MBE needed to collect structural coverage metrics on the final target hardware that was to be used in the UAV platform. This hardware had limited RAM and a primary requirement stipulated that only 50% of this RAM was to be used by the FADEC system under test. MBE would need a lightweight tool that would use as little RAM as possible to store and return coverage data during test execution.

**Figure 1** – Illustration of a FADEC system

MBE also needed to capture structural coverage metrics from a range of different software builds and needed an efficient way to combine results from multiple test runs into a single, unified coverage report.

The MBE team work collaboratively and needed to export coverage results in a convenient, easily-readable way that could be shared across the team efficiently.

**Figure 2** – Example RapiCover HTML export

The solution

Rapita delivered an integration of RapiCover, a structural coverage solution that has a long track record of successful deployments in high-criticality aerospace projects. RapiCover features the lowest overheads available on the market and was able to support the limited RAM allocation available on MBE’s target hardware.

RapiCover’s comprehensive in-built tutorials enabled MBE engineers to learn how to effectively use advanced RapiCover functionality to support their verification workflow, such as merging multiple reports, creating “justifications” for unreachable code, and exporting coverage reports to support collaboration. When MBE did need additional support, Rapita’s best-in-class support service was there to provide high-quality, timely support.

Thanks in part to their successful use of RapiCover, MBE successfully passed their SOI#4 audit.

The benefits

RapiCover’s extremely low on-target overheads reduced the number of builds needed to produce coverage results and made it simple to work with MBE’s RAM-constrained target
MBE were able to efficiently merge multiple coverage maps into a unified, complete report, making the collection of results simpler, with less manual steps in the workflow
RapiCover’s justifications feature made it easy to mark unreachable code (for example defensive code) as covered by manual review; automatic migration of justifications when code changes also improved analysis efficiency

Justifications — **Figure 4** – MBE were able to add coverage gap justifications straight from their source code (generic example shown)

HTML exports of coverage reports made it easy for MBE’s engineers to share coverage data and work efficiently as a team
Best-in-class support provided timely technical assistance when needed

“RapiCover’s low overheads and advanced features enabled our team to significantly reduce the time and effort required for our structural coverage analysis. Rapita’s support team also demonstrated a genuine determination to support us when required, and we are delighted with our overall experience with Rapita as a verification partner.”
Steve Baker
Director
MBE Systems

Next Steps

To learn how RapiCover can help reduce the cost and effort of code coverage analysis, visit our product page.

To find out more about what Rapita can do for you, visit our contact page.

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RapiCover’s advanced features accelerate the certification of military UAV Engine Control