PositiveNewsCorner

Based on inputs by Shahid

India’s Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) has carried out the first flight of a Hawk-i advanced jet trainer fitted with an indigenously developed real-time operating system (RTOS), called HAL-RTOS.

The development of HAL-RTOS is a big boost, because Avionics systems in India are currently developed using commercial RTOS procured from foreign suppliers. The import of the technology is highly costly, provides very limited flexibility in incorporating new features and adaptation to new hardware platforms. Moreover, imported RTOS are also vulnerable to cyber-attacks which may compromise the safety and security of the avionics system.

The new RTOS will remove dependency and help achieve self reliance. HAL-RTOS can easily be made as a standard Real Time Operating System for any future avionics systems development in the country. The HAL-RTOS supports Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) architecture. Key features include address, space and time partitioning, priority pre-emptive process scheduling and health monitoring.

HAL-RTOS is the first indigenous RTOS developed in India from scratch and certified by Center for Military Airworthiness and Certification (CEMILAC), HAL Chairman T. Suvarna Raju said. “The RTOS is a key technology for concurrent execution of multiple applications and optimal use of hardware resources which is of paramount importance for increased complexity of modern avionics software,” Raju added.

Cemilac (Center for Military Airworthiness and Certification) is India’s defense certifying agency for aircraft—manned and unmanned—its components and equipment.

Advanced modules like network stack and file system were co-developed with IIT- Kharagpur which also carried out formal method based verification of the RTOS kernel.