Malvern (1st December 2024) -– Innovate UK and the German government have just awardedfunding of £1 million to a pioneering Anglo-German research project. D-RisQ will be collaborating with Newcastle University in the UK, fortiss GmbH,the research institute of the free State of Bavaria in Germany, and Verified Systems International GmbH. Theobjective of the project is to demonstrate that assured software can bedeveloped cost-effectively, potentially increasing innovation in those sectorsand reducing costs and time to market for highly complex safety critical edded software.
The Project is co-funded by Innovate UK and the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action in Germany as part of their 'Climate Action, sustainability and resource efficiency initiative', backed by a decision of the German Bundestag through the Central Innovation Programme for SMEs (ZIM).
Nick Tudor, CEO of D-RisQ Ltd:
”Over the next few years, we are looking forward to working with Newcastle University here in the UK and with our German colleagues in fortiss GmbH and Verified System International GmbH on this ground breaking project. We are aiming to build new capabilities that will help complex software projects get to market faster, more assuredly with an initial focus on the automotive and medical device sectors, so all safety critical sectors can be addressed.”
The Project
The PlaTFoRm project (Practical Testing of Formal Requirements) addresses critical challenges in safety-critical system certification by developing an automated, cost-effective approach to identifying potential errors early in the development process. Focusing on an automatic lane keeping system and a medical device, the project will seek to prove the value of formal methods of software engineering in an industrial setting.
Real-World Impact: what makes this so special?
More and more driver assist technology is being developed for modern cars. Autonomous driving (AD) technologies, such as highly sophisticated cruise control and other level-three and level-four automation features represent a growing market potentially worth hundreds of billions of pounds according to a report by McKinsey & Company ('Hands off: Consumer perceptions of advanced driver assistance systems').This functionality also represents a technological challenge to develop highly complex software (an average car can now use software comprising millions of lines of code) and assure and certify that it is safe. The complexity involved in such software and level of expertise required to develop it, is placing considerable economic pressure on the OEMs and their supply chain. Not to mention that there is a global shortage of software engineers. Any innovation in this area, by the very nature of the size of this and other safety-critical markets, has the potential to save billions.
A great deal of medical innovation is through the invention of medical devices that require software that will work as designed, and not suffer any failure that could harm human life. According to a McKinsey & Company report “Software has become the biggest cause of medical device recalls, indicating an issue with software development and quality the industry.” This is an international research initiative that could dramatically improve safety in the development of embedded software whilst substantially reducing time to market and overall cost.
UK Talent, Global Innovation
This £1 million project brings together researchers and organisations from the UK and Germany, with D-RisQ at the heart of this international collaboration.
Please contact us for more information about this project and how we can support your project.
