Automated Test
Challenge
Tight interactions of control software and mechatronic hardware (mechanics, hydraulics, electronics) lead to a new kind of complexity that is difficult to manage during mechatronic design. Software offers great flexibility to implement new functions, but also unlimited opportunities to introduce bugs. The interaction of the different engineering disciplines makes the design task even more complex. Moreover, non-deterministic behavior of the mechatronic hardware has to be considered: components may spontaneously fail during operation, component parameters vary due to manufacturing tolerances or drift away due to aging.
Control software must detect many of these cases and must react adequately (adaptation, reconfiguration). There is an exponential space of possible cases (e.g. component failure × time of failure × input variations over time).
The challenge for the design engineer is to consider all relevant cases during design - a task that calls for a systematic approach, due to the large number of cases.
Idea: Automated Test
QTronic supports you in the development and introduction of methods for the simulation-based automated test of mechatronic designs, for instance based on TestWeaver. For more details, see also this conference paper.
Benefit for the development process
- Quality assurance: Test automation enables you to permanently test a mechatronic design during the entire design process with low overhead and fast turnaround times.
- Time and cost savings: Test automation helps to detect bugs and design flaws early, when they can be eliminated quickly and with low costs.