In 2003, just as the invasion of Iraq was heating up, the U.S. Army reached out to the University of Minnesota’s Center for Distributed Robotics (CDR). They needed compact robots capable of providing real-time reconnaissance and situational awareness for troops on the ground. The CDR, the army knew, was already engaged in developing advanced remote-controlled […]
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For more than two decades, the Need for Speed (NFS) video game franchise captured the hearts of young gamers across the globe with its high-octane thrills, heart-pounding car chases, and the adrenaline rush of illegal street racing. Yet for many, especially those who played the earliest iterations in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, NFS […]
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System engineering involves a delicate interplay between three tasks: specification (what a system should do); implementation (what a system actually does); and verification (determining whether they agree). Already, novel generative AI technologies have emerged that can assist with implementation and verification (e.g., respectively, Microsoft’s CoPilot, and formal verification tools developed on DARPA’s PEARLS Artificial Intelligence […]
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While most engineers and scientists join Galois to be part of a company that conducts groundbreaking research, for our unique culture of collaboration, or for the great benefits and work-life balance, there’s a lesser-known but equally exciting perk of working at Galois: participating in the creation of spinouts. Throughout my time as a research engineer […]
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Digital engineering (DE) is gaining momentum as the system engineering community matures practices and tooling. In its present avatar, DE workflows and tools rely on MBSE (Model-Based Systems Engineering) for developing and maintaining digital system artifacts and keeping these artifacts in sync during all phases of the system. This is presently achieved via descriptive models […]
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In prior posts, we’ve discussed techniques and benefits of digital engineering (DE) applied to system design, in particular hardware and software for cyber-physical systems (computer systems that interact with the real world). In this post we’ll simultaneously go big and small to present a case study in how formal methods + models can enable us […]
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Organizations seeking to integrate digital-first practices into their engineering processes often rapidly discover a common roadblock: critical dependencies on the individual expertise of specific employees embedded in legacy workflows. Discovering this issue has prompted some to ask what role might generative technologies play in supporting digital engineering transformation efforts: “Can they help us reduce reliance […]
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In the world of cyber physical systems, the aim of Digital Engineering (DE) is to speed up the development process while simultaneously improving security, reliability, safety and performance. The core mechanism enabling this outcome is a refinement based design and implementation process whereby high-level requirements and reference architectures are refined into low-level requirements and system […]
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Systems engineering has come a long way since the 1960s. Defense and aerospace data management systems, which initially evolved under a centralized authority, must now adapt to highly distributed organizations with multiple authorities and open and modular development needs. Organizational management techniques have evolved to smooth logistics and collaboration between contributors, and data management and […]
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The Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said, “change is the only constant in life.” Yet, all too often, it is change that we struggle with the most. In business and technology, as in life, there is comfort in doing things the way we have always done them. We hold onto strategies, processes, and approaches that are […]
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