Home // International Journal On Advances in Systems and Measurements, volume 4, numbers 3 and 4, 2011 // View article

Testing Platform for Hardware-in-the-Loop and In-Vehicle Testing Based on a Common Off-The-Shelf Non-Real-Time PC

Authors:
Daniel Ulmer
Steffen Wittel
Karsten Huenlich
Wolfgang Rosenstiel

Keywords: Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing; In-Vehicle Testing; Embedded Real-Time Systems; Temporal Behavior; Driver Assistance Systems

Abstract:
The rapidly growing amount of software in embedded real-time applications such as Driver Assistance Functions in cars leads to an increasing workload in the field of software testing. An important issue is thereby the timing behavior of the software running on the target hardware. The timing behavior of the Driver Assistance Functions is usually tested on real-time capable Hardware-in-the-Loop platforms as well as by in-vehicle tests, where the timing behavior is evaluated with the help of data loggers. Both, the data loggers and the Hardware-in-the-Loop platforms are mostly custom-made, proprietary and in consequence expensive. Moreover, many software developers usually have to share few instances. Existing inexpensive solutions show deficits in their real-time capabilities, which means for Hardware-in-the-Loop platforms that the real-time behavior cannot be guaranteed and for data loggers that they do not provide a common time base for relating data from different vehicles involved in a maneuver. This paper shows an approach for a real-time capable Hardware-in-the-Loop platform based on a common off-the-shelf PC running a non-real-time operating system and an extended I/O interface, which can be used for in-vehicle tests as well. Thereby, the simulation software runs on the developer's desktop computer while the extended I/O interface provides a global time base and ensures the real-time communication with the System Under Test even for complex timing requirements. Two examples show how the introduced setup can be used to test Driver Assistance Functions on a Hardware-in-the-Loop platform and as a data logger for in-vehicle tests. Questions such as "How much time is needed by the Adaptive Cruise Control System to determine the relative speed of the preceding vehicle?" can be answered.

Pages: 182 to 191

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2011. Used with permission.

Publication date: April 30, 2012

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-261x