“ELEKTRA” : A SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE THAT APPLIES NEW PRINCIPLES TO ELECTRONIC INTERLOCKING

Abstract This paper presents the conceptual ideas which lead to the architecture of the electronic interlocking system “ELEKTRA”. The key problem of software safety is adressed by the introduction of the so-called ‘safety bag’ method. While the convetional interlocking software is implemented using the real-time programming language ‘CHILL’ (CCITT High Level Language) the ‘safety bag’ uses a totally different programming paradigm based on AI (Artificial Intelligence) methods. Reliability is achieved by the-application of the fault-tolerant, distributed computing system ‘VOTRICS’ (Voting Triple Modular Computing System).