MCAP III will develop and demonstrate an avionics architecture for Army unmanned aircraft that is common to mission processing systems currently under development for Army Helicopters and Future Combat System (FCS) Ground Vehicles.
Rockwell Collins is developing the common computing and open systems network architecture with application to the Army AH-64 Apache Helicopter, Combat Armed Rotorcraft (UCAR), Shadow 200, A-160 Hummingbird and Fire Scout.
Rockwell Collins will also deliver mission processor prototypes and perform a laboratory demonstration on the Shadow 200 platform of several applications including Live HDTV Video Transmission, 'See-and-Avoid' autonomous operation, Automatic Target Cueing, Backup Automatic Target Recognition and Passive Target Ranging.
Rockwell Collins' MCAP III solution is based on an open systems architecture approach. The company has chosen LynuxWorks' LynxOS-178 as the operating system.
LynxOS-178 is a commercially available DO-178B level-A certifiable RTOS that meets the most stringent standards for safety-critical avionics systems.
As a POSIX conformant operating system, LynxOS-178 will assure application portability, software reuse and interoperability between embedded military systems.
In addition, LynxOS-178 allows multiple software applications of differing criticality levels within partitions to execute, completely isolated, on the same hardware resource.
"We are extremely excited about our continuing relationship with Rockwell Collins in the realm of mission-critical military systems," said Dr. Inder Singh, CEO and chairman of LynuxWorks.
"The MCAP III program is yet another example of the tremendous shift underway in the military to an open systems architecture approach in avionics and communication projects."
"We look forward to additional opportunities in helping the Army achieve its vision of a network-centric battlefield with maximum interoperability and commonality among its systems."