STTR Phase I: A digital engineering tool for integrated software and hardware reliability

The broader/commercial impact of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project aims to streamline system reliability analysis, catering to industries such as healthcare, telecommunications, and transportation, where system failures can be life-threatening. With a projected $20.8 billion software quality assurance market by 2030, the project's impact can be substantial.

The proposed solution employs automation and advanced data analytics to revolutionize system reliability. It introduces data-driven reliability analysis, offering automated, collaborative, cloud-based, and visually intuitive tools to enhance system dependability. Positioned at the convergence of Software-as-a-Service, software quality assurance, and data analytics markets, the solution holds significant commercial potential.

Given the critical role of system reliability across industries, the successful implementation of this project will be a key enabler for Industry 4.0.

This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project focuses on the domain of system quality assurance. In this domain, the state-of-the-art approach focuses on either hardware reliability or software reliability before deployment. However, in practice, the most critical part of the system lifecycle is during software operation, and failure depends on both software and hardware.

Therefore, the project introduces a pioneering system-level reliability model to merge software and hardware reliability. It also aims to create advanced analytics algorithms for estimating failure intensity and pinpointing critical system flaws. Additionally, the project plans to design, implement, evaluate, and deploy quantitative models for system reliability within a cloud-based software-as-a-service platform.

This platform will facilitate collaborative analysis, offering descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics on integrated software and hardware reliability. Through interactive reliability block diagrams, the platform democratizes system reliability assessment, lessening reliance on manual expertise for the first time.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.