Designing to MIL-STD-2165: Testability

The V-22 avionic hardware is the first to be designed under MIL-STD-2165 testability program requirements. This paper presents an overview of the avionics design-for-testability approach and lessons learned to date relative to the application of MIL-STD-2165. The paper will discuss incorporation of testability requirements up front in the avionics design which will drive the supportability philosophy at both the Organizational and Depot levels of maintenance. The paper will compare previous avionics hardware testability requirements versus those applied to the V-22 avionics and highlight areas of improvement. A discussion of testability design impacts on reduced level of testing (i.e. WRA/SRA/System) will be included. In addition, the paper discusses an innovative approach to meeting the user requirements for a man-portable forward deployed maintenance capability that forms the basis for a two level support scenario (Organizational and Depot). The innovation comes from the fact that the on-board Central Integrated Checkout system will provide data as well as fault isolation and will use this data as a mechanism to reduce the size and complexity of the stimulus and measurement hardware at either the Organizational or Depot level depending on the deployment requirements.     

Spatial memory exclusivity: Examining performance of multiple object-location memories

Research on location memory suggests that integration of separate sources of information does not occur when recalling the position of a common target object. In a relatively simple task, previous research shows no observable benefit from holding two spatial memories compared to one. It has been suggested that exclusively utilizing only one of two memories may account for this finding. The current research tests the robustness of this idea as well as an alternative in the form of an averaging approach to combining spatial information. The results suggest that exclusivity may not be the best account for performance of multiple object-location memories. Rather, memories may well combine in a manner similar to averaging, where information is available for each memory but combined in a nonbeneficial way.