A Virtual Testing Framework for Real-Time Validation of Automotive Software Systems Based on Hardware in the Loop and...

Area of Science:

• Automotive Engineering
• Software Validation
• Cyber-Physical Systems

Background:

• Traditional X-in-the-loop (XIL) methods for automotive software validation are costly and time-consuming.
• Existing methods often lack effectiveness in simulating critical abnormal situations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel testing framework for validating automotive software systems under critical abnormal situations.
• To provide a cost-effective, time-efficient, and highly accurate validation approach.

Main Methods:

• Utilized hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation combined with real-time fault injection (FI).
• Developed a virtual environment with diverse driving conditions (weather, traffic, roads).
• Implemented programmatic fault injection without modifying system architecture for real-time constraints.

Main Results:

• The framework enables real-time analysis of system behavior under single and simultaneous sensor/actuator faults.
• Achieved high accuracy in HIL simulation compared to non-real-time methods (average relative error of 2.52%).
• Demonstrated superior accuracy and capability compared to state-of-the-art methods.

Conclusions:

• The proposed framework offers a safe, reliable, and realistic environment for real-time validation of complex automotive systems.
• It significantly reduces cost, time, and effort in the automotive software development lifecycle.
• The approach effectively validates system performance under critical abnormal situations without extensive modeling.