The technical progress of the past decade stands as compelling evidence of the fundamental role that the university research community can play in contributing to important Defense technology.
However, as real-time systems technology has advanced, so have the real-time demands of industrial and military systems. These new demands, together with unresolved old issues such as usable formal specification and verification techniques that scale up, dictate the future strategic directions of real-time computing research.
Some key drivers for real-time systems research (at least in the DoD context) for the forseeable future include the following:
- wireless networks of both stationary and mobile ("nomadic") servers and clients that dynamically and repeatedly enter and depart the overall system;
- predictable bounded performance of WWW (and similar) access in tactical context (by human operators and software agents);
- accommodation of new system interconnects such as ATM, Myrinet, and networks of networks;
- quality of service for multi-media data transmission;
- assured network security (survivability) while simultaneously supporting real-time performance requirements;
- high-fidelity distributed simulation with man and hardware-in-the-loop;
- operationally effective virtual and synthetic environments with visual, auditory, and haptic fidelity;
- real-time image databases; and
- asymmetric uplink and downlink capability of Global Broadcast System.
Although engineering solutions can address some of these issues, most require fundamental new insights from basic research. Just as was the case in achieving the substantial progress in real-time systems theory over the past decade, solutions to the new problems that can be articulated today, and to those that will appear tomorrow, will require a partnership between Government, universities, and industry.