A development and test methodology using synthetic environments

摘要

Described herein is a method of developing a system using virtual test, virtual trial and synthetic environment techniques. The method comprises a number of sequential stages (10, 12, 14, 16, 18) which interact with test processes (20, 22) to develop the system. In the first stage (10), a model of the system is defined in accordance with system requirement. The second stage (12) uses the model in a real-time synthetic environment to determine performance of the system which is compared with model performance. The next two stages (14,16) introduce hardware into the real-time virtual test, virtual trial and synthetic environment to assess its impact on performance of the system, the environment being capable of switching between software and hardware variables which are being assessed in the system. In the last stage (18), the system is assessed in a real trial environment and the resulting performance compared to model performance. In each sequential stage (10, 12, 14, 16, 18), the performance is processed by interactive processes (20, 22) as indicated by the arrows.