Case Study: Israel Aerospace Industries achieves DO‑178B Level B–certified TaxiBot control software and halved development time with MathWorks Model‑Based Design (MATLAB & Simulink)

Israel Aerospace Industries Develops DO-178B Level B Certified Software for a Hybrid-Electric Aircraft Tractor

Israel Aerospace Industries developed TaxiBot, a hybrid‑electric aircraft tractor that tows airliners with engines off to cut fuel use, CO2, and noise. The challenge was to create DO‑178B Level B certified control software that senses pilot steering and braking requests, strictly limits forces on the nose landing gear, and supports simulations, hardware‑in‑the‑loop (HIL) testing, and requirements traceability. IAI adopted MathWorks’ Model‑Based Design approach using MATLAB and Simulink to meet these requirements.

Using MathWorks tools (MATLAB, Simulink, Stateflow, Simulink Requirements, Simulink Coder, Embedded Coder), IAI modeled the plant and control loops, ran closed‑loop simulations and HIL tests on dSPACE hardware, generated certifiable C code for a Freescale target, and performed field testing and analysis in MATLAB. The MathWorks‑based workflow halved development time, enabled more than 50% model reuse, simplified DO‑178B certification, and produced DO‑178B DAL B software approved by EASA; TaxiBot is now in operation for narrow‑body aircraft and a wide‑body version is in development.

Israel Aerospace Industries

Zeev Gabbin

Software Manager for the TaxiBot project