RTOS can; 1) provide an entire product, from requirements to manufacturing test stands or 2) work with customers engineers to develop product, or 3) license our patents and core technology assets for reuse within your products while providing minimal consulting services to facilitate an efficient technology transfer to your engineers.

 

The process begins with a preliminary discussion of requirements to determine if product requires new asset development and attempts to deteremine the amount of "Research" needed in the "Research & Development" phases of the product.  Since "Research = Risk" it is the greatest contiributor to project effot, where little research implies reduced development times / costs.  A high percentage of the products we create have never been done before where RTOS has been very successful achieving our customer's goals even with significant amounts of "Research".

 

Depending upon system complexity we create a preliminary Device Profile document, refine open issues and generate preliminary project estimates.  If customers preliminary ROI is promising and would like to proceed further then a Mutual Non Disclosure Agreement (MNDA), an RTOS Licensing Agreement and a generic RTOS Consulting Services Agreement is provided for review.  The RTOS Patent and Technology Licensing fees vary with the number of  products to be developed, the number of reused assets and their complexity.  The product requirements are captured in a "Device Profile" document for each product on a Time & Materials basis described in the Consulting Services Agreement, since a reasonable level of detail is required to set the scope of a project and to provide increasiningly more accurate project estimates.  XRAE Technologies are provided once the RTOS Licensing Agreement is executed, which then enables populating the Device Profile with related XRAE hardware, software object and UAP documentation as well as enables delivery of hardware, source code including various other XRAE and RTOS support documents.  RTOS provides training materials that utilize existing hardware, where engineers incrementally impliment an XRAE peer controller, significantly reducing the XRAE learning curve. 
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RTOS usually has first prototype hardware and code "limping" within two to three man weeks of the start of a project, primailry limited by the time is takes to complete preliminary hardware schematic design, board layout, circuit board delivery, ordering parts and construction of prototype hardware.  Product functionality is then incrementally added in new User Applicaiton Programs (UAPs) with an initial focus on "high risk" hardware and/or firmware functionality where, when applicable, constant system integration and testing is performed throughout the development cycle.  This often involves the creation of an automated "system test stand" composed of modified RTOS standardized IO modules and associtated reused PC test software and test scripts.  Since modified and improved versions of the system test stands are often utilized as a manufacturing test stand once a product is completed, creating a test stand early in the development cycle, to facilitate repeatable automated product testing, reducing the overall product development cycle.

 

As various requirements are met, formal test plans and test results for hardware, objects and UAPs are added to the Device Profile and dated for customer review.  Per the RTOS Process document, Device Profile text is changed from "black" to "blue" in color upon passing the documented test plans, or "red" if fails tests.  The test results are captured and either referenced or placed within the Device Profile.  The customer can quickly determine the project status and "test coverage" by reviewing the Device Profile for unpopulated sections (not tested) and for "blue text" (passed tests).  Many document sections are "cut, pasted then edited" from other XRAE products drastically reducing the time needed to create this critical product support documentation.