A Systematic Approach to Testing Automotive Control Software

Usually, the testing of today’s ECU software follows a gut feeling approach, leading to test gaps and test redundancies. This paper presents a new, more systematic way of testing automotive control software. The central element of the approach is the Classification-Tree Method for Embedded Systems (CTM/ES). Using an interface description, which can be based on the specification and/or an executable model of the software, test scenarios can be derived systematically and described in a graphical way so as to provide the user with visual information about test coverage. The CTM/ES can be integrated into an overall test strategy for automotive control software developed in a model-based way. The approach opens up a new way of assuring quality for embedded control software which is especially designed for automotive software developers.