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Tool qualification

RVS tool qualification for DO-178 B/C and ISO 26262 projects

Why choose our tool qualification:

  •  Simple qualification for critical projects
  •  Reduce certification effort
  •  Get the best from RVS, qualified
  •  Ensure that your assurance case remains valid
DO-178C qualification case studyContact us

  • Overview
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Simple qualification for critical projects

Our Tool Qualification Kits and Qualified Target Integration Services produce the evidence you need to qualify RVS tools for use in DO-178C or ISO 26262 projects.

We provide expert guidance on how to use the materials we provide to qualify your use of RVS, and clearly identify what you need to do throughout the qualification timeline.

"The quality and ease-of-use of Rapita’s Qualification products and services is second to none" - Collins Aerospace

simple qualification
reduce certification effort

Reduce certification effort

We have qualified the key RVS features that reduce the cost of verifying critical code. Our qualified instrumenters, results data capture, and exports ensure that you don’t need to manually verify any of the results generated by RVS.

Many other features of RVS, including merging coverage data from multiple reports and using justifications to mark your code as covered, are qualified. This lets you streamline your use of RVS and verify your code efficiently in a qualified environment.

Get the best from RVS, qualified

We provide guidance to ensure that you get the best from RVS in a qualified environment, including how to produce evidence that your code meets its timing deadlines, how best to use RVS when your code changes, and how to robustly reuse coverage data across incremental software builds.

We help you keep your project on schedule and avoid lengthy discussions with your certification authority by ensuring that our recommended workflows are aligned with certification guidance.

The Rapita Verification Suite (RVS) has been used in the critical embedded industry for over 15 years and supported a number of avionics projects globally with clients including Airbus, Cobham, Collins, Honeywell and Pilatus. Qualification kits for qualified RVS products have supported more than 20 DO-178B and C certification projects up to and including DAL A.

Qualification
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Ensure that your assurance case remains valid

While we put every effort into ensuring that RVS is as robust as possible, our software may still include bugs. If we identify any issues that may affect your assurance case, for example by producing false positive or negative results or miscalculations in WCET, we notify you about these immediately.

Our Assurance issue notifications include everything you should know about an issue, including a detailed description, fix schedule, and any workarounds, mitigation strategies or fixes we have identified for an issue.

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  • DO-178B/C qualification kit Qualification kits for RVS qualification in DO-178B/C projects.
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  • DO-278A qualification kit Qualification kits for RVS qualification in DO-278A projects.
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  • ISO 26262 qualification kit Qualification kits for RVS qualification in ISO 26262 projects.
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  • Qualified Target Integration Service Additional evidence to qualify the use of RVS in your development environment.
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  • Streamlined qualification material Qualification materials are customized to your specific development environment.
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  • Template tool user documents Template DO-330 tool user documents to help you write your user documents.
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  • Qualified instrumenters Qualified instrumentation that doesn't require manual review.
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  • Tool qualification for DO-178 and ISO 26262 Tool qualification support for DO-178B/C and ISO 26262.
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  • Clear qualification guidance Understand what you need to do and when to qualify your use of RVS.
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  • Compliance checklists Compliance checklists help you identify what you need to do to qualify your use of RVS.
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  • Best usage guidance Guidance to get the best from our RVS tools.
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  • Assurance issue notification We notify you of issues that may affect the validity of your results as soon as we identify them.
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  • Tool qualification licensing Flexible licensing options to best meet your needs.
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DO-178B/C tool qualification

If you're using the verification evidence produced by RVS tools to satisfy DO-178B or DO-178C objectives, you'll normally need to show that these tools work correctly within the context of the project's development environment. This is referred to as tool qualification. DO-178B and DO-330 ("Software Tool Considerations", which is referenced from DO-178C) recommend providing the following for tool qualification:

  • PSAC (Plan for Software Aspects of Certification). This references the Tool Qualification Plan and the Tool Accomplishment Summary documents. This must be produced by the user of the tool being qualified, per DO-178.
  • TOR (Tool Operational Requirements). This describes what the tool does, how it is used and the environment in which it performs.
  • TAS (Tool Accomplishment Summary). Shows compliance with the PSAC. Summary of the data showing that all of the requirements in the TOR have been verified. Optional for Tool Qualification Level 5 tools.
  • TVR (Tool Verification Results). Test cases, procedures and results demonstrating the TOR is achieved by the tool.
  • TQP (Tool Qualification Plan). Describes the process for qualifying the tool, simplifying production of the PSAC. Optional for Tool Qualification Level 5 tools.

Additional documents in Rapita qualification kits

Our qualification kits comply with DO-330 "Software Tool Quality Considerations". To support this, we provide the following additional documents as well as the core DO-178 qualification documents required for tool qualification (less the PSAC), in our qualification kits:

  • Tool Qualification Overview – this provides a general overview of how to use the delivered data to comply with DO-330 tool user objectives, per DO-330 table 11-2.
  • Tool Qualification Scope – this provides a summary of the tool features that have been verified throughout the qualification process. 
  • Test Case Design – this provides analysis criteria for the assessment of RVS integrations.

DO-178C objectives addressed by Rapita solutions

Rapita's tools can address many of the DO-178C objectives related to software verification, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. DO-178C objectives addressed by Rapita solutions

ID

Description

Objective

DAL A

DAL B

DAL C

DAL D

Rapita Solution

How?

A-4, 13 

Software partitioning integrity is confirmed

6.3.3.f 

⚫

⚪

⚪

⚪

✔ RapiTime*

Software partitioning integrity

A-5, 6

Source Code is accurate and consistent

6.3.4.f

⚫

⚪

⚪

 

✔ RapiTime*

Source code is accurate and consistent

A-6, 1 

Executable Object Code complies with high-level requirements 

6.4.a 

⚪

⚪

⚪

⚪

✔ RapiTest

Requirements-based testing

A-6, 2 

Executable Object Code is robust with high-level requirements 

6.4.b

⚪

⚪

⚪

⚪

✔ RapiTest

A-6, 3

Executable Object Code complies with low-level requirements 

6.4.c

⚫

⚫

⚪

 

✔ RapiTest

A-6, 4

Executable Object Code is robust with low-level requirements 

6.4.d

⚫

⚪

⚪

 

✔ RapiTest

A-6, 5

Executable Object Code is compatible with target computer

6.4.e

⚪

⚪

⚪

⚪

✔ RapiTime*

Target computer Compatibility

A-7, 5

Test coverage of software structure (modified condition/decision coverage) is achieved

6.4.4.c

⚫

   

✔ RapiCover

Structural coverage analysis

A-7, 6

Test coverage of software structure (decision coverage) is achieved 

6.4.4.c

⚫

⚫

  

✔ RapiCover

A-7, 7

Test coverage of software structure (statement coverage) is achieved 

6.4.4.c

⚫

⚫

⚪

 

✔ RapiCover

A-7, 8

Test coverage of software structure (data coupling and control coupling) is achieved

6.4.4.d

⚫

⚫

⚪

 

✔ RapiCoupling**

Data coupling and control coupling analysis

A-7, 9

Verification of additional code, that cannot be traced to Source Code, is achieved

6.4.4.c

⚫

   

✔ RapiCoverZero

Additional code verification

⚪ Objective required at DAL 
⚫ Objective required with independence at DAL

Requirements-based testing

DO-178C objectives: 6.4.a, 6.4.b, 6.4.c, 6.4.d

RVS running on a Laptop

DO-178C objectives §6.4.a-d require testing of the code to ensure that it complies with and is robust with respect to high and low-level requirements.

DO-178C keeps the development and verification processes separate and requires levels of independence between them. Test environments often present tests as code, which can be challenging for test engineers to create and review while remaining independent from the development process.

RapiTest supports test authoring without requiring engineers to write any additional code. Its test steps and expressions reference the software's interface, not its implementation. The underlying integration is flexible and can provide test evidence on any embedded target. Rapita works with your organization to ensure a robust, qualifiable integration with which results can be collected from both on-host and on-target tests. Learn how RapiTest helped Kappa optronics produce DO-178C requirements-based test evidence in our case study.

If you’re looking for a V&V partner, we can help you produce DO-178C test evidence for your software by writing and executing requirements-based tests, either using your DO-178C processes or our own. See how we did this for Triumph Integrated Systems in our case study.

Target computer compatibility

DO-178C objective: 6.4.e

Person soldering

 

“...execute the software to confirm that... the Executable Object Code is compatible with the target computer.”

RTCA DO-178C §6.4.e

This objective requires that selected tests, especially Hardware-Software Integration tests, are executed in the target computer environment. Challenges include harnessing low-level (component) tests in the target environment and retrieving outputs (test results) from that environment.

RapiTest lets you specify your test harness as stubs, runs, and checks, and executes the harness in a host, target, or simulated computer environment. Performing checks in that environment minimizes the required data transfer and helps to automate test evaluation and discrepancy analysis. All RVS tools are designed from the ground up to support on-target testing. Learn how RapiTest helped Kappa optronics produce DO-178C requirements-based test evidence on-target in our case study.

Rapita’s Target Integration Service and Qualified Target Integration Service ensure that a robust integration of RVS with the embedded target hardware is deployed and qualified. See how we delivered target and qualified target integrations services to Collins Aerospace in our case study.

Test procedures are correct

DO-178C objective: 6.4.5.b

Person going through documents

We can provide V&V services to help you produce DO-178C test evidence for your software by writing and executing requirements-based tests, either using your DO-178C processes or our own. If we do, we perform the analysis needed to ensure that test procedures are correct. You can see how we produced DO-178C test evidence for Triumph Integrated Systems in our case study.

Test results are correct and discrepancies explained

DO-178C objective: 6.4.5c

Person going through documents

 

“...ensure that the test results are correct and that discrepancies between actual and expected results are explained.”

RTCA DO-178C §6.4.5.c (Table A-7 2)

This review shows that all tests either pass or fail with a well-understood and agreed justification. The challenge here is to efficiently gather the expected and actual results and check for discrepancies.

RapiTest allows you to define both the set-up actions and the correctness checks for each test. It executes those in the target computer. When a check fails, it provides the expected and actual results to show you the discrepancy. Learn how RapiTest helped Kappa optronics produce DO-178C requirements-based test evidence on-target in our case study.

We can provide V&V services to help you produce DO-178C test evidence for your software by writing and executing requirements-based tests, either using your DO-178C processes or our own. If we do, we perform the analysis needed to ensure that test results are correct and discrepancies are explained. You can see how we produced DO-178C test evidence for Triumph Integrated Systems in our case study.

Requirements coverage

DO-178C objectives: 6.4.4.a, 6.4.4.b

ReqIF to RVS

Traceability is crucial in DO-178C. It links corresponding items in different outputs such as requirements and tests. Challenges include ensuring that engineers can keep traceability information up to date when they make changes and consolidating the traceability information into a single view for presentation and review. Traceability is typically managed by dedicated requirements traceability tools.

RVS tools integrate with commonly used requirements traceability tools such as DOORS, Jama, Polarion and Visure, allowing traceability links to be maintained in a project throughout the project life cycle. Within RVS, traceability is maintained between, for example, test cases and associated structural coverage at the code level, and requirements coverage can be viewed when requirements have been imported from a requirements traceability tool.

We can provide V&V services to help you produce DO-178C test evidence for your software by writing and executing requirements-based tests, either using your DO-178C processes or our own. If we do, we perform the analysis needed to ensure that test procedures are correct. You can see how we produced DO-178C test evidence for Triumph Integrated Systems in our case study.

Structural coverage analysis

DO-178C objectives: 6.4.4.c

RapiCover report

Structural coverage analysis (SCA) demonstrates that the code has been sufficiently tested, with the associated coverage criteria dependent on the software DAL. Structural coverage has to be obtained through requirements-based testing and can be obtained by analysis of either source code or object code coverage. The main challenges of SCA include instrumentation overheads for on-target testing, effort required to merge coverage from different test builds, and resolving incomplete structural coverage.

Rapita provides support for both source code and object code based structural coverage analysis through RapiCover and RapiCover Zero , respectively. RapiCover’s instrumentation overheads are significantly lower than competitor solutions, allowing coverage to be collected in fewer test builds, therefore reducing test overheads. Where different builds are still needed, results can be merged, and this feature is qualified. RapiCover justifications make it easy to mark code as covered by analysis to resolve coverage gaps, and support is available to migrate justifications when code changes. Unlike some competitor solutions, RapiCover’s instrumentation is qualified, so manual review of applied instrumentation is not required. See how we supported organizations such as Collins Aerospace and Cobham Aerospace Connectivity in their DO-178C structural coverage analysis in our case studies.

Data coupling and control coupling coverage analysis

DO-178C objectives: 6.4.4.d

RapiCoupling

Data coupling and control coupling (DCCC) analysis allows integration errors to be identified earlier during the verification life cycle, which can increase software quality and reduce overall verification costs. There is no accepted industry-wide definition of the detailed analyses that are required to meet the objective, and until now, commercial automation tools have lacked the capability and flexibility to support the varying interpretations of DCCC analysis across the safety-critical avionics industry.

Rapita provide DCCC services and are developing in-depth, flexible support for DO-178C data and control coupling analysis through the upcoming RapiCoupling tool, which will include guidance on selecting criteria for the analysis. A case study including use of the tool in collaboration with Collins Aerospace was presented at DASC 2024. A public experimental version of the tool will be available in summer 2025.

Our DCCC services include working with you to determine a strategy for DCCC analysis that fits your project, helping you set up the automation infrastructure to support the analysis, and V&V to produce on-target DCCC evidence for your software.

Additional code verification

DO-178C objectives: 6.4.4.c

RVS running on a Laptop

 

“…if the software level is A and a compiler, linker, or other means generates additional code that is not directly traceable to Source Code statements, then additional verification should be performed to establish the correctness of such generated code sequences.”

RTCA DO-178C §6.4.4.2.b

The correctness of additional code introduced by a compiler should be verified for DO-178C DAL software. Correctness cannot be demonstrated through coverage alone. DO-278A provides clarifications on expectations for meeting the objective, suggesting some approaches for meeting the objective and stating that it isn’t a trivial task “ the work involved in the process of demonstrating traceability from object code to Source Code may not be trivial”, “ This process is intensive and should be thorough”.

Rapita supports meeting the objective through RapiCover and RapiCover Zero to support coverage analysis and traceability, and V&V services to support compiler verification, one of the approaches suggested by DO-248C to meet the DO-178C §6.4.4.c objective. See how we supported the verification of a compiler for an organization developing safety-critical applications in our case study.

More detailed information on this topic is available on the Rapita Systems website.

Requirements traceability

DO-178C objectives: 6.3.1.f, 6.3.2.f

ReqIF to RVS

Traceability is crucial in DO-178C. It links corresponding items in different outputs such as requirements and tests. Challenges include ensuring that engineers can keep traceability information up to date when they make changes and consolidating the traceability information into a single view for presentation and review. Traceability is typically managed by dedicated requirements traceability tools.

RVS tools integrate with commonly used requirements traceability tools such as DOORS, Jama, Polarion and Visure, allowing traceability links to be maintained in a project throughout the project life cycle. Within RVS, traceability is maintained between, for example, test cases and associated structural coverage at the code level, and requirements coverage can be viewed when requirements have been imported from a requirements traceability tool.

We can provide V&V services to help you produce DO-178C test evidence for your software by writing and executing requirements-based tests, either using your DO-178C processes or our own. If we do, we perform the analysis needed to ensure that test procedures are correct. You can see how we produced DO-178C test evidence for Triumph Integrated Systems in our case study.

Software partitioning integrity

DO-178C objectives: 6.3.3.f

RVS running on a Laptop

 

“The objective is to ensure that partitioning breaches are prevented”

RTCA DO-178C §6.3.3.f

Once you have designed the software architecture, this objective asks for analysis to show that partitions cannot interfere with one another. As well as relying on the RTOS vendor assurance case and reviewing that tasks are configured correctly, the challenge can be to obtain direct evidence of prevention of partitioning breaches on your target configuration.

The RapiTime workflow supports the measurement of tasks that are interrupted, abandoned, or which cause the computer to reset. By inserting deliberate attempts to breach partitioning, you can confirm that your integrity mechanisms are configured and operating correctly. The ability to integrate with multiple environments lets you execute such tests from prototype environments through to the final target.

Source code is accurate and consistent

DO-178C objectives: 6.3.4.f

RapiTime Report

 

“...determine the correctness and consistency of the Source Code … stack usage … worst-case execution time ...”

RTCA DO-178C §6.3.4.f (Table A-5 6)

This review and analysis objective is typically met through additional testing (RTCA DO-178C §6.3, para 2). This testing reveals the dynamics of the source code. The challenge is finding a test environment that can run tests early, and provide that insight, without being significantly different from the environment used for later testing.

RapiTime provides flexible instrumentation and powerful visualization to identify and explore the worst-case behavior of your software. The same interface and workflow can be re-targeted between analysis testing, test case development, and formal on-target testing.

* - Objective relates to multiple aspects; RapiTime only addresses timing aspects

** - RapiCoupling is currently in development

 

A(M)C 20-193 objectives addressed by Rapita solutions

The A(M)C 20-193 defines specific objectives to help avionics developers certify systems using multicore processors. These objectives are addressed by the components of Rapita's MACH178, as shown in Table 2.

Table 2. A(M)C 20-193 objectives addressed by Rapita solutions

A(M)C 20-193 objective

Rapita solution

MCP_Planning_1

MACH178
RapiTest
RapiTime
RapiDaemons
Consultancy services

MCP_Planning_2

MCP_Resource_Usage_1

MCP_Resource_Usage_2

MCP_Resource_Usage_3

MCP_Resource_Usage_4

MCP_Software_1

MCP_Software_2

MCP_Error_Handling_1

MCP_Accomplishment_Summary

Frequently asked questions

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  • What is tool qualification and why do I need to do it?  
  • How do RVS qualification kits help me throughout the qualification process? 
  • How do RVS qualification kits help reduce review effort?  
  • What standards do you use for tool qualification?  
  • Which input languages to the RVS tools can be qualified?  
  • I’m interested in your full qualification package. Can you describe the process?  
  • Which safety standards do you offer qualification support for?  
  • Do you offer support for projects with a long life cycle? 
  • Which RVS tools do you provide qualification support for?  
  • You don’t offer qualification support for using the RVS tool I’m using in my safety context. What can I do?  
  • Can you help me provide all of the evidence I need to qualify RVS for use in my project?  
  • How long does the tool qualification process take?  
  • Why is your tool qualification process more complex than that for my other tools?  
  • What is the scope of your qualification support?  
  • What if I make a change to my RVS integration after qualification?  
  • What if I discover an error in your qualification support?  
  • What if I discover a tool bug after qualification?  
  • What if you discover a tool bug after qualification?  
  • What if you discover a tool bug after qualification?

    We regularly announce tool bugs that could affect existing integrations, when those bugs affect the assurance of the tool output. This includes false positives, missed code constructs (for coverage analysis) and unwanted functional changes to the software under test. We provide advice, workarounds and fix schedules for all assurance issues that we publish this way.

  • What if I discover a tool bug after qualification?

    We’ll run the bug through our usual problem reporting, triage and assurance issue analysis processes. If you cannot use a workaround, we can provide add-on fixes or new wavefront versions of the tool that fix your issue, depending on your needs.

  • What is tool qualification and why do I need to do it?

    Tool qualification provides evidence that the software you’re using doesn’t introduce or fail to detect errors in your software when it is being used within your project. If you’re working in the context of safety standards such as DO-178 or ISO 26262, you need to provide this evidence if the tool you’re using automates or replaces a manual process and you aren't manually reviewing output from the tool.

  • Which safety standards do you offer qualification support for?

    We offer tool qualification support for DO-178B, DO-178C, DO-278A and ISO 26262 safety standards.

  • I’m interested in your full qualification package. Can you describe the process?

    We’ve described this in our Tool Qualification Product Briefs.

  • What standards do you use for tool qualification?

    We produce our qualification material to support DO-178C, DO-278A and ISO 26262 certification in alignment with guidelines in RTCA’s DO-330: Software Tool Qualification Considerations.

  • Which input languages to the RVS tools can be qualified?

    RVS tool qualification covers the use of RVS in projects written in Ada, C and C++, including mixed language projects.

  • Which RVS tools do you provide qualification support for?

    The qualification support we already have available is listed on our Resources page. If you need qualification support that isn’t listed, contact us to see how we can help.

  • You don’t offer qualification support for using the RVS tool I’m using in my safety context. What can I do?

    If you want qualification support for using an RVS tool in a specific safety context and we don’t already offer qualification support for this combination, we’d be happy to hear from you to discuss extending our support. Contact us for more information.

  • Can you help me provide all of the evidence I need to qualify RVS for use in my project?

    We follow the DO-330/ED-215 guidance for qualification of a COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) tool. Per these standards, a tool vendor cannot provide all of the evidence needed for tool qualification – some of it must be provided by the tool user.

    Our qualified target integration service includes all of the DO-330 tool developer items, as well as documentation and effort to help you to complete DO-330 tool user items.

    This includes generic documents, on-site tests and expected results that help you produce a large proportion of the evidence you need for qualification, including all of the documentation that needs to be provided by the tool vendor (us). In addition to what we provide, you will need to run on-site tests, check results against a list of expected results, and produce some documents, such as the user Tool Operation Requirements, yourself. We provide template tool user documents to help you with this.

    See our Tool Qualification Product Briefs for more details.

  • Why is your tool qualification process more complex than that for my other tools?

    We use flexible tool components and custom integrations to maximize the efficiency of our tools and their compatibility with a wide range of targets and test environments. The price of this flexibility is additional tool qualification work. We’ve split our qualification support into two parts – one for the flexible tool components and one for the custom integration – and we’ve done everything we can to reduce the effort involved in the custom part.

  • What is the scope of your qualification support?

    Licenses for our qualification support are valid for a specific version of the RVS tools you’re using, a specific integration of those tools into your development environment, and a specific customer project.

    Please contact us if you need to use our qualification kits in multiple projects, or projects with multiple certifications.

  • What if I make a change to my RVS integration after qualification?

    If you make a change to the RVS tool version or integration of RVS into your development environment after we have produced qualification materials, we will need to reproduce those materials, which will incur extra costs.

    For more information, see our Tool Qualification Product briefs.

  • What if I discover an error in your qualification support?

    If it’s a genuine mistake, we can issue an addendum report or reissue any affected documents, as appropriate. If you need a different scope or level of information, that can be accommodated but requires more effort. For more information, contact us.

  • Do you offer support for projects with a long life cycle?

    We offer a frozen version support service for qualified RVS integrations, so you can rest assured that you will have access to the version of RVS you're qualifying even if your project has a very long life cycle.

  • How long does the tool qualification process take?

    The length of the tool qualification process varies depending on the complexity of your project and integration.

    In general, we can deliver a qualified target integration service in around 6 weeks from the submission of a purchase order, subject to any configuration changes and the availability of Rapita engineers.

    We confirm the delivery schedule after we receive your purchase order.

    Note that changes to the configuration of your integration during the service delivery process may affect engineering effort, delivery dates and costs.

  • How do RVS qualification kits help reduce review effort?

    We customize RVS qualification kits to reflect aspects of your development environment in order to reduce review effort. They include documentation, requirements and test results for the specific RVS tools you are using and the programming languages used in your project.

    Qualification kits also include tool user document templates and compliance checklists that help you check your compliance with DO-330 tool user objectives.

  • How do RVS qualification kits help me throughout the qualification process?

    RVS qualification kits are designed to make the qualification process easier. Each kit includes a qualification timeline that clearly identifies key stages in the process, and compliance checklists help you check your progress.


Qualification success stories

Rapita supported GMV engineers to implement a RapiCover integration to collect coverage results during testing

How RVS tools helped Kappa to verify an airborne video system.

How our Qualification Kits and Services are supporting Collins Aerospace's use of RVS in DO-178C projects.

How RVS supported verification of EasyMile's ASIL D autonomous driving solutions.

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