MINIMINDS – Middleware per l’Interoperabilità e l’Integrazione di Sistemi critici per tempo e affidabilità

Interoperatiblity between applications is a key topic due to the growing complexity of the next generation mission-critical systems, which require different heterogeneous applications to interact in a highly distributed context. Such complexity has major impact over the development timing and the maintenance costs, since it implies wider operational validation and higher on-site service support. According to the experience in FINMECCANICA, a fundamental issue is represented by the detection of the so-called integration faults, which is i) not always possible during the testing phase of the single components, and ii) highly dependent on the specific operational conditions of the overall system. The targets of MINIMINDS are the research, the analysis and the development of innovative and cost-effective techniques for the integration and the interoperability of mission-critical distributed systems. MINIMINDS focuses on the latest trends in the development of the next generation of systems-of-systems; as such, the project is an extension of the former COSMIC Lab, in which dependable stand-alone systems were addressed. The project will develop a middleware platform based on open standards, which will allow the integration of multiple and heterogeneous applications (domain independency) in a dependable and secure way. The software platform will embed innovative techniques for automatic online monitoring of integration faults, thus leading to increased integration capabilities and lower maintenance costs. Based on the platform, MINIMINDS will develop a demonstrator system, built as a “system of systems” for the Air Traffic Management (ATM) domain, which is surely one of the most representative mission-critical contexts in which integration and interoperability are key issues. The demonstrator will integrate a number of real systems such as ATC and radar applications, airport system units and display consoles. An experimental campaign will be designed and performed on the demonstrator in order to show the effectiveness of the solution proposed, in terms of the higher levels of interoperability, security and maintenability achieved. The joint participation of industrial partners, such as SELEX-SI and SESM, and academic partners, such as CINI, will provide the right skill balance to address the research and development activities required in the project. It is to be noted how such subjects as system integration, interoperability, dependability and security are some of the fundamental topics in the scenario of the next generation of FINMECCANICA products.