Data flow oriented control law design with the graphical language HOSTESS

HOSTESS is a workstation based specification and design tool for control laws in cyclic systems with fixed scheduling. The tool has been successfully applied to electronic flight control (fly by wire) and minor critical systems as centre of gravity control or a variety of development simulator modules. HOSTESS is a graphical data flow language with a restricted set of basic modules, simple control structures and extensive consistency checking avoiding coding errors, dead code or initialization problems. A special version with a reduced set of functions is compatible with tools used by suppliers or project partners.