A Blueprint for New ADAS/AD Test Strategies

Requirements-based Vehicle-in-the-Loop Testing

This section presents the functional testing of autonomous driving/ADAS functions using vehicle-in-the-loop (VIL) testing. The user journey shows the different steps which are typically required to execute such a test on largely unmodified vehicles.

User Journey
The framework described here to apply VIL testing of ADAS functions to vehicles which do not have to be specially modified to enable testing is described in this user journey. This is possible by employing exclusively over-the-air (OTA) technology to stimulate the sensors instead of using data injection. This enables the evaluation of the full sensor set and the complete chain of effects (this includes the physics of the sensor and the full software stack). With this it is possible to test the full system reaction.

This potentially also enables the application of functional VIL testing of ADAS functions to periodical technical inspections (PTI) and production testing. VIL test benches which rely on heavily modified vehicles can only be applied in research and development.

In a first step the driving functions to be tested must be defined and the requirements must be formulated by the simulation modeler or by regulations. The test specification engineer then derives test specifications and scenarios to satisfy the requirements.

Based on these and the chosen vehicles under test (VUTs), a test bench consisting of multiple hardware and software components (see “Technical Application and Tools Needed”) is assembled and a continuously maintained database of VUT and test spec details is set up.

Before test execution the database is used to precondition the test bench for the specific VUT. The test is then executed by a test engineer fully automatically or semi-manually, depending on the driving function. The test results are then evaluated, matched to the test case specifications, and a test report is generated. Depending on the area of application this test report may be more detailed or simply a pass/fail that leads to further diagnosis.