Products and Technologies
Rapid Integration
Shortened Integration Timeframes
Reduce Time between Concept and Integration
Customers today seek cost-effective, flexible, and quickly deployable solutions with minimal changes to existing applications. TES-i developed a tool set and an architecture capable of integrating any product onto disparate platforms on a reduced schedule. TES-i’s cost-effective, proven integration method is a simple and flexible solution that integrates systems with minimal changes to existing applications. It also supports old and new technologies, different operating systems, and messaging capabilities.
Our Products
TESseractTM
TESseract, a TES-i, CES, and FlightWire partnership, is a scalable off-the-shelf solution for rugged, flight-capable UAS computers hosting FACE architectures. A rapid integration solution for FACE developers and FACE platforms, TESseract grows as needs change, from a small 2-card system to a fully redundant 8-slot solution. The processor is loaded with a FACE common operating environment, including FACE architecture libraries, allowing it to support a wide range of avionics, embedded development, or real-time safety-critical operations.
Rugged for harsh environments, it features a wide range of input power supplies, a fully sealed conduction-cooled chassis, and MIL-STD-810G based environments for embedded processing operating in the most extreme UAS environments. TESseract’s FW-3x-VNX-800 VNX 19mm card provides a robust, redundant, EMI-protected, and flight-capable networking bus. Based on proven AS5643/IEEE-1394b (Mil-1394) standards and hardware, our implementation provides deterministic gigabit speed and triple redundancy.
TESseract and Mil-1394 VNX Communication Card
CAPABILITY DRIVEN ARCHITECTURE (CDA)
TES-i’s CDA patent process originated when we helped the U.S. Army address a complex problem – integrating various devices onto multiple disparate aircraft hardware/software architectures while reducing life cycle costs. TES-i successfully developed and demonstrated CDA for radio control as CDA Radio Control (CDA-RC) for military rotorcraft systems.
CDA design provides a common interface to a category of similar devices, much like desktop computer applications have a common interface to the myriad of computer printers and other peripherals. TES-i’s CDA features:
- Platform independence
- Middleware extensions for common application development
- Scalable data sharing
- Fault-tolerance and “hand-offs” fail-over
- Data localization
- Data persistence by storing the data to a “disk”
- Quality of Service (QoS)
- Security support for data
The CDA architecture can be applied to a diverse set of capabilities including communications, navigational, sensors, actuators, etc. It is one of the few open systems based on the FACE technical reference architecture systems that can claim software reuse for safety/mission-critical applications aligned with the RTCA DO-178C and the FAA’s AC 20-148 guidelines. CDA eliminates ad hoc and stovepipe system development that cause duplication of effort across the various platforms for integrating the same type of equipment. TES-i continues to support U.S. Army FACE-aligned programs. TES-i expects our CDA capability to revolutionize how the military develops and verifies military applications.
Our Solutions at Work
Rapid Integration
Darpa Urban Project
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Urban Challenge required an unmanned fully autonomous vehicle that could complete a 60-mile course in 6 hours. TES-i participated in the DARPA Urban challenge as the electronics and software integrator for Team Scorpion’s unmanned ground vehicle (UGV). Our team members included Raytheon, iRobot, Preferred Chassis Fabrication, and the University of Arizona. TES-i provided integration and coordination for the five-company team.
TES-i supported the project with extensive prototyping and experimentation in the lab and the field. We utilized our Capability Driven Architecture (CDA) as the software framework to enable us to rapidly integrate various computer resources, sensors, and actuators onto the vehicle platform. We also worked closely with the team to provide computing resources and the overall system design of the fully autonomous UGV. TES-i successfully met all of its expected milestones for this project.
In addition to our integrator role, TES-i:
- Developed and provided the hardware/software test system which employed a script engine to enable the team to exercise and test the vehicle on blocks before field runs.
- Developed the ground station to provide indirect vision driving and tele-operation when needed.
- Developed the software to process the data collected from the various sensors including cameras, radar, and LIDAR for lane and obstacle detection.
- Developed both real-time hardware and software toolkits for use by other developers.
- Acted as our Team’s safety assessor