Hardware-in-the-Loop test automation of embedded systems for agricultural tractors

Abstract

In recent years, embedded control systems are extensively replacing the mechanical control systems in the agriculture industry, following passenger car and commercial vehicle segments. The main role of these electronic based control system is to enhance the tractor’s performance, providing the necessary user interface for the ease of function selection, and enhance operator’s comfort and safety. To achieve this migration, testing and verification of embedded systems are essential which is quite challenging in the automotive industry. Therefore, before entering to the field, Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) becomes a crucial part of testing for the verification of system functionality. The current research, discusses in detail about Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) testing automation facility using National Instruments hardware and NI VeriStand™ software as a testing platform. This test facility performs the auto test execution and functionality verification at hardware level. A plant model was imported and run in the HIL simulator along with the control software in the embedded system for real time system functionality verification. It was seen that adapting this methodology, a considerable amount of time has been reduced compared to the manual testing. This test automation helps majorly in reducing the time for executing test case, re-executing the test during system error correction (bug fixing) and for rapid prototype testing. Therefore, the developed test approach can be beneficial to the embedded system developers/testers to develop their own testing framework.