Airbus Helicopters has selected AdaCore’s Gnat Pro tool suite to develop and test the software used in its advanced VSR700 prototype tactical unmanned drone, which it is developing for use in the defense sector.
Airbus Helicopters selected AdaCore’s Gnat Pro Ada for PowerPC VxWorks 6.x/Cert based on several criteria, including its ease of integration into the existing development infrastructure, its capability to develop monitoring algorithms, and its capacity to help certify the software up to DO-178C Design Assurance Level B.
Matthieu Vatinet, head of embedded software products at Airbus Helicopters said, “We selected AdaCore and the Ada language because we believe that this technology and related tools will increase the maintainability and quality of our software and make it easier to provide some evidence for certain software certification objectives.
“The quality of AdaCore’s support was an important advantage, and another anticipated benefit was the ease of developing mature code.”
Jamie Ayre, commercial director at AdaCore said, “Knowing that the Airbus Helicopters team needed to develop highly reliable and safe code for their VSR700 prototype project, we were extremely pleased that they selected Ada and AdaCore.
“The GNAT Pro Ada tool suite offers exceptional verification abilities that will help Airbus to detect problems early in their development process when they are easiest and least costly to correct. And our support services will address any questions or issues that may arise.”
The GNAT Pro development environment is a toolset for designing, implementing, and managing applications that demand high reliability and maintainability. GNAT Pro is available for Ada and also for C and C++.
