As the tool is intended to initially support design of commercial flight deck systems, the closest non-NASA commercial application will be in the design of military flight deck systems and related components. Other directly related applications include UAV, UGV, and UUV operator interfaces and supporting systems. Because of the tool's flexibility and general applicability to large-scale systems engineering projects, there is an essentially unlimited number of potential applications outside the government. The best candidates are those that involve complex system-of-systems designs. Examples include the automotive industry, the health care and medical device industries, the telecommunications industry, and large portions of the information technology sector. Many of these have already begun to adopt model-based design and other system engineering technologies that are consistent with the use of this tool.
Initial applications of the proposed technology are envisioned to be within NASA's Aviation Safety Integrated Intelligent Flight Deck program. The software has direct application in the design and analysis of flight deck systems and of distributed systems that intersect with flight deck operations. The tool's features are motivated by the particular combination of challenges encountered in flight deck design (complex, safety critical, multidisciplinary, mixed human and automation systems, etc.), and this same combination arises in many other contexts related to aircraft and spacecraft operations. Moreover, the software is highly customizable and can be modified to support a wide variety of engineering disciplines. The software can therefore be of significant benefit to a wide variety of systems engineering projects, especially those that involve integration of multiple subsystems for which safety analyses are difficult to conduct manually, including projects associated with the NextGen Air Transport System.
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