Automated Functional and Robustness Testing of Vehicle Infotainment System 2009-01-1366

In a current premium vehicle the infotainment system is typically implemented as a distributed system consisting of a number of modules communicating via a Media Oriented Systems Transport (MOST) network. Typical issues with such systems of systems (SoS) are emergent behaviour as systems interact in an unanticipated manner particularly during some initialisation conditions where it may be possible to get delays and failures in individual systems. Testing of infotainment systems at an overall level is conventionally carried out manually by an expert who can observe at a customer level but this has limitations affecting test coverage and effectiveness. Hence there is a requirement for an automated infotainment testing system which replicates a human expert encompassing relevant sensory modalities relating to control (i.e. touch) and observation (i.e. sight and sound) of the system under test. This paper describes the design and development of such a system that consists of simulation of vehicle CAN, vision-based inspection, navigation of features, random cranking waveform generation, sound detection and test automation. The system developed is able to; stimulate the system across a wide variety of initialisation conditions, exercise each function, check for correct operation and record failure situations for post-testing analysis.