Abbreviated Test Language for All Systems (ATLAS) is a specialized programming language for use with

automatic test equipment Automatic test equipment or automated test equipment (ATE) is any apparatus that performs tests on a device, known as the device under test (DUT), equipment under test (EUT) or unit under test (UUT), using automation to quickly perform measure ...

(ATE). It is a compiled high-level

computer language A computer language is a formal language used to communicate with a computer. Types of computer languages include: * Software construction#Construction languages, Construction language – all forms of communication by which a human can Comput ...

and can be used on any computer whose supporting

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

can translate it into the appropriate low-level instructions.

History

ATLAS Test Language

The original language was developed by Aeronautical Radio, Incorporated (ARINC) and standardized under ANSI/IEEE-Std-416 and released on 22 December 1983. Its purpose was to serve as a standard programming language for testing and maintenance of electronic systems for military and commercial aerospace applications. The language was designed to be platform-independent. The ATLAS language is oriented toward the Unit Under Test (UUT) and is independent of the test equipment used. This allows interchangeability of test procedures developed by different organizations, and thus reduces costly duplication of test programming effort. The first ATLAS specification developed by the international committee was published in 1968. The basic document has been revised several times. An ATLAS implementation typically consists of an online compiler (OLC), test executive (TEX or Test Exec), and

file manager A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage computer files, files and folder (computing), folders. The most common Computer file#Operations, operations performed on files or groups of files incl ...

and media exchange (FMX) packages. ATLAS is run in TEX mode on test stations while testing

electronic equipment Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...

Syntax and Structure

The structure of an ATLAS program is very similar to FORTRAN. Standard ATLAS program structure consists of two elements: preamble structure and procedural structure. The language makes extensive use of variables and statement syntax. An ATLAS statement consists of these fields: ,$ * : single character flag * separator (space) * : statement number * separator (space) * : verb * separator (comma) * : format depends on * statement terminator ($) Sample ATLAS Statements: 000250 DECLARE,DECIMAL,'A1'(4)$ 000300 FILL, 'A1', 'NUM', (1) 1, 5, (2) 20, 87, (3) 15, 12, (4) $30, 18 Comments may be included with a 'C' in the field. These ATLAS statements apply a voltage to a pin (stimulus) and verify the presence and characteristics of a voltage at a pin: ... 010200 APPLY, AC SIGNAL, VOLTAGE-PP 7.5V, FREQ 3 kHz, CNX HI=P1-$1 ... 010300 VERIFY, (VOLTAGE-AV INTO 'VAVG'), AC SIGNAL, VOLTAGE-PP RANGE 64V TO 1V, SAMPLE-WIDTH 10MSEC, SYNC-VOLTAGE 2 MAX 5, SYNC-NEG-SLOPE, MAX-TIME 0.5, GO-TO-STEP 400 IF GO, LL 0.5 UL 50, CNX HI=P2-4 LO=P2-5, SYNC HI=P2-8 LO=P2-$5 ...

Applications

ATLAS has been used in the

U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its origins to 1 ...

primarily on test stations for testing the avionic components of the

F-15 Eagle The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle is an American twin-engine, all-weather fighter aircraft designed by McDonnell Douglas (now part of Boeing). Following reviews of proposals, the United States Air Force (USAF) selected McDonnell Douglas's des ...

F-16 Fighting Falcon The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is an American single-engine supersonic Multirole combat aircraft, multirole fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force (USAF). Designed as an air superio ...

C-5 Galaxy The Lockheed C-5 Galaxy is a large military transport aircraft designed and built by Lockheed, and now maintained and upgraded by its successor, Lockheed Martin. It provides the United States Air Force (USAF) with a heavy intercontinental-rang ...

C-17 Globemaster III The McDonnell Douglas/Boeing C-17 Globemaster III is a large military transport aircraft developed for the United States Air Force (USAF) between the 1980s to the early 1990s by McDonnell Douglas. The C-17 carries forward the name of two previ ...

, and

B-1 Lancer The Rockwell B-1 Lancer is a supersonic variable-sweep wing, heavy bomber used by the United States Air Force. It has been nicknamed the "Bone" (from "B-One"). , it is one of the United States Air Force's three strategic bombers, along with th ...

. The

U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest displacement, at 4.5 million tons in 2021. It has the world's largest aircraft ...

uses ATLAS-based programs for testing avionics systems of the

P-3C Orion The Lockheed P-3 Orion is a four-engined, turboprop anti-submarine and maritime surveillance aircraft developed for the United States Navy and introduced in the 1960s. It is based on the L-188 Electra commercial airliner by Lockheed; it is ea ...

, UH-1Y Venom,

AH-1Z Viper The Bell AH-1Z Viper is a twin-engine attack helicopter, based on the AH-1W SuperCobra, designed and produced by the American aerospace manufacturer Bell Helicopter. It is one of the latest members of the prolific Bell Huey family. It is oft ...

SH-60 Seahawk The Sikorsky SH-60/MH-60 Seahawk (or Sea Hawk) is a twin turboshaft engine, multi-mission United States Navy helicopter based on the United States Army UH-60 Black Hawk and a member of the Sikorsky S-70 family. The most significant modificati ...

, E-2C Hawkeye,

F-14 Tomcat The Grumman F-14 Tomcat is an American carrier-capable supersonic, twin-engine, tandem two-seat, twin-tail, all-weather-capable variable-sweep wing fighter aircraft. The Tomcat was developed for the United States Navy's Naval Fighter Experi ...

F/A-18 Hornet The McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet is an all-weather supersonic, twinjet, twin-engine, carrier-based aircraft, carrier-capable, Multirole combat aircraft, multirole combat aircraft, designed as both a Fighter aircraft, fighter and attack airc ...

S-3 Viking The Lockheed S-3 Viking is a four-crew, Twinjet, twin-engine turbofan-powered jet aircraft designed and produced by the American aerospace manufacturer Lockheed Corporation. Because of its characteristic sound, it was nicknamed the "War Hoover" ...

A-6 Intruder The Grumman A-6 Intruder is a twinjet all-weather subsonic attack aircraft developed and manufactured by American aircraft company Grumman Aerospace. It was formerly operated by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps. The A-6 was designed in ...

EA-6B Prowler The Northrop Grumman (formerly Grumman) EA-6B Prowler is a twin-engine, four-seat, mid-wing electronic-warfare aircraft. Operated by both the United States Marine Corps and United States Navy between 1971 and 2019, it was derived from the A- ...

, AV8B Harrier, and

V-22 Osprey The Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey is an American multi-use, tiltrotor military transport aircraft, military transport and cargo aircraft with both vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) and short takeoff and landing (STOL) capabilities. It is designed ...

. The U.S. Navy and

Marine Corps Marines (or naval infantry) are military personnel generally trained to operate on both land and sea, with a particular focus on amphibious warfare. Historically, the main tasks undertaken by marines have included raiding ashore (often in supp ...

used a version called Super Atlas for its AN/USM-484 hybrid test set (HTS) test benches. The AN/USM-247 VAST (Versatile Avionics Shop Test) was used by the Navy onboard

aircraft carrier An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and hangar facilities for supporting, arming, deploying and recovering carrier-based aircraft, shipborne aircraft. Typically it is the ...

and shore stations. It has been used in testing the F-14, S-3, E-2,

A-7 Corsair II The LTV A-7 Corsair II is an American carrier-capable subsonic light attack aircraft designed and manufactured by Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV). The A-7 was developed during the early 1960s as replacement for the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk. Its design wa ...

, A-6, etc. VAST is considered by many to be the grandfather of modern avionics test equipment. In the years that followed the cold war, ATLAS found uses on many dual-use aircraft for the U.S. and

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...

, as well as commercial business, regional, and

general aviation General aviation (GA) is defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as all civil aviation aircraft operations except for commercial air transport or aerial work, which is defined as specialized aviation services for other ...

aircraft. ATLAS test program sets (TPS) allow porting older programs to new hardware, providing some protection against hardware obsolescence. Although a standard, many adaptations, customizations, and flavors exist that impede full portability. Because most ATLAS toolsets are custom, on custom hardware, with a custom software load for the platform, it is not as prone to some types of issues that plague other languages that are more prevalent in the industry; the down side is that training is not available to the general public, so it also requires an extensive investment in personnel. ATLAS generally can be configured to run "stand-alone", or "stand-alone monitored only" which can help limit many of the tampering and other concerns with mainstream commercial software. Other languages, such as

BASIC Basic or BASIC may refer to: Science and technology * BASIC, a computer programming language * Basic (chemistry), having the properties of a base * Basic access authentication, in HTTP Entertainment * Basic (film), ''Basic'' (film), a 2003 film ...

, C/ C++,

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (prog ...

, and

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

, are also used on commercial and military programs for testing of systems; ATLAS typically requires another computer system to either optically scan test results, or read a tape, disk, or locked memory stick/data key from a test station and then perform statistical analysis on test results for a variety of uses.

Subsets

Subsets include:

Implementations

* TYX (now Astronics) created a COTS ATLAS compiler,

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

(IDE), and run time system, called Professional ATLAS Work Station (PAWS), that ran on the original

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the List of IBM Personal Computer models, IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible ''de facto'' standard. Released on ...

and was later updated for all flavors of

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. *

Lexico ''Lexico'' was a dictionary website that provided a collection of English and Spanish dictionaries produced by Oxford University Press (OUP), the publishing house of the University of Oxford. While the dictionary content on ''Lexico'' came from ...

made translators that would convert ATLAS code to run under HP Rocky Mountain BASIC. These were popular with

McDonnell Douglas McDonnell Douglas Corporation was a major American Aerospace manufacturer, aerospace manufacturing corporation and defense contractor, formed by the merger of McDonnell Aircraft and the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1967. Between then and its own ...

Boeing The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...

Honeywell Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building automation, industrial automa ...

, etc. *

Grumman The Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, later Grumman Aerospace Corporation, was a 20th century American producer of military and civilian aircraft. Founded on December 6, 1929, by Leroy Grumman and his business partners, it merged in 19 ...

made an ATLAS compiler for their IFTE (Integrated Family of Test Equipment) V3 and V5 test stations. *

General Dynamics General Dynamics Corporation (GD) is an American publicly traded aerospace and defense corporation headquartered in Reston, Virginia. As of 2020, it was the fifth largest defense contractor in the world by arms sales and fifth largest in the Unit ...

made a compiler for their F-16 test station. *

RCA RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent pool, patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Westinghou ...

developed a compiler for their EQUATE (Electronic Quality Assurance Test Equipment) testers. * Marconi Space and Defence Systems (before they were Ferranti or GEC-Avionics) developed a compiler for their test systems called MATLAS. In the late 1980s/early 1990s, it was ported to an

interpreted language In computer science, an interpreter is a computer program that directly executes instructions written in a programming or scripting language, without requiring them previously to have been compiled into a machine language program. An inter ...

on Windows called MABLE (an acronym for "Matlas Applications using BORIS Language Extensions"; BORIS is an acronym for "Bill's Own Run-time Interpretive System"). *

Thorn EMI Thorn EMI was a major British company involved in consumer electronics, music, defence and retail. Created when Thorn Electrical Industries merged with EMI in October 1979, it was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituen ...

developed a version called EMIPAL (EMI's Programmable Atlas Language) for use on its in-house test equipment, ADEPT (an acronym for " Analogue and Digital Electronic Production Tester"). Three were built two in the Dawley Road site in Hayes, Middlesex, and another at the Wells site in

Somerset Somerset ( , ), Archaism, archaically Somersetshire ( , , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel, Gloucestershire, and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east ...

References

External links

IEEE Standards Association ATLAS documents
(

IEEE Standards Association The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association (IEEE SA) is an operating unit within IEEE that develops global standards in a broad range of industries, including: power and energy, artificial intelligence systems, ...

) {{DEFAULTSORT:Abbreviated Test Language For All Systems Avionics programming languages Programming languages supporting units of measure