Driveable Automotive Electrical & Electronics Test-Board

This paper describes a test system for improving the completeness and representativeness of automotive electrical/electronic (E/E) test benches. This is with the aim to enable more testing and hence increase the usage and effectiveness of these facilities. A proportion of testing for automotive electrical and electronics systems and components is conducted using E/E testing boards (“test-boards”). These are table-like rigs consisting of most or all electrical and electronic parts connected together as per a car/truck/van. A major problem is that the testing is conducted on the equivalent of a static vehicle: test-boards lack basic dynamic elements such as a running engine, vehicle motion, environmental, component and fluid temperatures, etc. This limits the testing that can be carried out on such a test-board. One solution is to provide one (or more) facilities to simulate and stimulate the electrical/electronic signals needed to effectively replace these missing dynamic elements (such as engine speed, vehicle speed and power supply voltage fluctuations). A simulation model connects these signals together to emulate a representative vehicle and environment behaviours. A further extension is to configure the physical structure of these test-boards to allow the tester to sit and “drive” the test-board in a similar way to a driver in a car. Unlike hardware-in-the loop facilities, the focus of the driveable test-board is to enable human testers access to faster, cheaper and easier to use E/E virtual vehicles. This paper describes a custom engineered test system combined with a modified test-board to meet this challenge.