Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) has achieved a milestone with the first flight of Hawk-i. The aircraft is equipped with indigenous real time operating system (RTOS) developed by the defence enterprise.

HAL, CMD, T Suvarna Raju, said, “It is the first indigenous RTOS that has been developed in India from scratch. In a first, an indigenous RTOS has been certified by Center for Military Airworthiness and Certification.”

The RTOS is the system software which provides a standard run-time environment for real-time applications execution in a safe and reliable manner. “The RTOS is a key technology for concurrent execution of multiple applications and optimal use of hardware resources which is of paramount importance for increased complexity of modern avionics software”, Raju said.

Currently, avionics systems in India are developed using commercial RTOS procured from foreign suppliers. The import of technology is expensive and renders limited flexibility in incorporating new features and adaptation to new hardware platforms.

The imported RTOS may also be vulnerable to cyber-attacks which may compromise the safety and security of the avionics system. To overcome this dependency and achieve self-reliance, HAL had taken up the onus of designing an indigenous RTOS for safety-critical and mission-critical avionics systems.