HemsTec—Innovative UAV and Avionics Product Company Achieves 50% Improvement in Requirements Engineering Efficiency

With the enactment of the Interim Regulations on the Management of UAV and the CCAR-92 Civil UAV Operation Safety Management Rules, compliance in developing and certifying medium to large unmanned aircraft is essential.

AirEdge's requirements engineering tool, AirEdge Links, offers powerful requirements management capabilities and end-to-end traceability. Along with consulting services, it assists HemsTec in developing requirements for a large unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ground control system.

Customer Profile

Chengdu HemsTec Technology Co., Ltd. (HemsTec), established in 2014, is a private enterprise with state-owned shares, focusing on innovative development in the field of intelligent human-machine interaction in aviation. HemsTec continuously develops and iterates its three core products: the SMART series of integrated avionics systems, large UAV ground control systems, and flight simulators. These products cover various stages of aircraft design, operation, training, and maintenance, particularly excelling in UAV ground control systems, which have received widespread acclaim both domestically and internationally.

Challenges and Solutions

Challenge 1: Unclear Requirements Management Process

For enterprises new to compliance development and airworthiness certification of UAV, managing requirements such as capturing, developing, traceability, validating, and reviewing is unfamiliar. Managing these requirements is a critical challenge at the start of HemsTec's new product design.

Solution 1:

Based on best practices from previouly ceritified programs and the AirEdge Links, AirEdge supported HemsTec in completing the requirements management plan, sorting and compiling requirements standards, dividing requirements levels, and providing requirement samples. This helped HemsTec quickly establish its requirements management process and system, completing the first step of requirements engineering.

Challenge 2: Difficulties in Requirements Traceability

Designing a UAV ground control system is a complex multidisciplinary engineering task involving multiple system functions, dozens of devices, and hundreds of components. The requirements hierarchy, from customer aircraft-level requirements to software and hardware requirements, is extensive. Without complete requirements traceability, changes or issues in the later stages of product design and development can rapidly escalate.

Solution 2:

AirEdge Links uses advanced graph database technology, offering query speeds tens to thousands of times faster than ordinary relational databases. Traceability relationships below three levels are instantly visible, and even with more than five levels, they can be displayed in under two seconds. This greatly facilitates requirements review, confirmation, and subsequent audit work.

• Challenge 3: Large and Diverse Number of Requirements, High Management Complexity

As a crucial system lifecycle data, the correctness of requirements reviews determines whether the subsequent product meets customer needs. Traditionally, offline requirements reviews are complex, inefficient, time-consuming, and prone to errors.

• Solution 3:

AirEdge Links provides an online requirements review function, distributing, commenting, discussing, and making decisions online. This makes peer reviews of requirements efficient and accurate. For each requirement, Links offers powerful real-time communication, commenting, and feedback functions for reviewers, helping HemsTec complete the requirements review work efficiently and saving 50% of the review time.