System Level Test Automation in UAV Development

Abstract

As the complexity of defense systems have increased in recent years; avionics and automated test systems have become more complex. Consequently, system engineering requirements demand robust requirement verification for the customer specifications and product quality. Traditional test system does not meet the demands like inconvenient data format, difficulty in test programs' reuse, inefficient use of available system resources, difficult error findings. The testing technology is growing continuously and rapidly. Frequently used automated test strategies are mainly based on software testing in software verification level. A software insensitive avionic system mostly comprises software modules at the unit level. When it comes to testing from subsystem to system level different circumstances emerge. System level testing has always been heavily dependent on human intervention and human judgment. Before emergence of system of systems concept most of the systems have their own boundaries for external interaction at human machine interface (HMI) level. Hence it has been natural that testing system functionality as a whole at HMI boundaries were carried out by human testers. However due to developments in software technologies and by approaching to automated system level testing problem as a collection of many self-containing diverse sub-problems; it can be seen that software industry has already created lots of tools to address each of these sub-problems without even aiming to solve them for automated system test approach. In this paper automated UAV system test approach will be given by definition and analysis of each problem and solution addressing this problem. New automated testing model is presented to be functional on system level with a combination of hardware and software. The automated testing will handle the testing complexity with faster execution time, reduced testing costs, eliminating user errors and will also to increased probability of detecting failures. Test automation with both simulators and real devices is used for execution of the tests, and for the comparison of actual outcomes with predicted outcomes. This paper introduces a novel approach for test automation implementation for avionic system validation at system level in Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) development with different scenarios.