Rapid prototyping is the process of quickly building and evaluating a series of prototypes of a proposed system. A computer-aided prototyping system is a set of integrated tools supporting an iterative prototyping process characterized by exploratory design and extensive prototype evolution. The goal of this research is to investigate rapid prototyping of hard real-time systems via a computer-aided prototyping system, which is based on a prototyping language supporting the modeling of real-time systems and the reuse of software components. The research focuses on automated methods for retrieving, adapting, and combining reusable components; establishing feasibility of real-time constraints via scheduling algorithms; simulating unavailable components via algebraic specifications; generating translators and real-time schedules; constructing a prototyping project database; providing design completion and error checking facilities; and establishing a graphical interface for design and debugging.
