You are one of the few people in the world to see a train fly. Siemens and Thyssen Krupp teamed up to form Transrapid International to develop and deploy the Transrapid Train. The first of several Transrapid Trains will be built in Shanghai, China. The Transrapid Train utilizes a revolutionary magnetic levitation system that levitates and propels passengers at speeds up to a world record of 450 kph (281 mph). This video clip shows the train in operation at a fraction of the speed, but it is still impressive to see a flying train.

At these speeds, malfunctions could be a problem. So, Siemens imbedded Automated Reasoning’s ICAT e-diagnostic software in the Transrapid Train’s control system. ICAT monitors the train systems in real time and takes action in the event of malfunctions. ICAT notifies the train operator immediately, contacts maintenance engineers by wireless communication and informs them of the malfunction and the needed repair information. A model based reasoning, expert system together with web-enabled operation gave Siemens the edge. Automated Reasoning’s ICAL development software enabled Siemens to construct a software model of the train, link subsystems and add technical documentation. So, in the event of a problem, ICAT can pinpoint it rapidly and determine corrective action. And, because of its self learning capability, ICAT gets better with experience.

Whether your equipment floats, flies or does not move at all, Automated Reasoning has an e-Diagnostic or DFS (Design for Supportability) solution for you. Please contact us for more information. Visit http://www.transrapid.de/en/index.html for more information on this unique transportation system.

Transrapid International owns the copyright to the images of the Transrapid. All images of the Transrapid is courtesy of Transrapid International.

Automated Reasoning announced the release of the latest versions of its mobile e-Diagnostic Solutions.

More and more of our customers are demanding flexible, mobile systems for simplicity of use and allowing them more freedom of movement. Automated Reasoning has come forward with a flexible, affordable solution.

Imagine your field and customer engineers being completely mobile with a maintenance and diagnostic solution on a Pocket PC running Windows CE, which includes full data transfer, diagnostics, e-mail and phone capabilities.

There are two basic solutions:

	A Wireless networking solution allowing local mobility within a large site, and
	a GSM solution allowing total mobility through GSM communications.

Automated Reasoning offers both standard and customized solutions using its leading diagnostic technologies and the possibility of full outsourcing on Automated Reasoning's ASP and Hosting services.

See Mobile Solutions for a demonstration.

Automated Reasoning is proud to announce the release of ICAL 5.0. ICAL is a unique model-based, central repository, concurrent engineering tool for the improvement of system uptime through continuous improvement of:

	MTTR (Mean-Time-To-Repair) and
	MTBF (Mean-Time-Between-Failures).

Closed Loop Support System

The approach used includes the DFS (Design for Supportability) and Closed Loop Support System principles. ICAL is the most complete tool of its kind available today. Based on the ICAT technology - which was originally developed by the US military during the mid 80s, when over 100 man-years went into the underlying algorithms and coding - ICAL has since been developed into a very user-friendly commercial product.

The most obvious visual change in the new version of ICAL is the tabs at the bottom of where the Graphic window used to be. The tabs provide a natural position for a graphic display for each of the functions in ICAL and makes it easy to go logically from one function to the next. Virtual links are now displayed in blue text in the Tree view, making them easy to identify quickly. When exporting and importing data, virtual links are also imported provided that they are within the part that is imported.

ICAL 5.0 has improved Rule, fault mode, precondition, and post condition handling. There are also new functionality regarding the outline tree handling which includes the following: When adding items the tree displays expanded nodes as currently selected. The option to expand or collapse the tree to selectable levels. The component is now highlighted in the tree as it is selected in the spare part/component list.