Unlocking the Potential of Virtual ECU Validation: Revolutionizing Software Testing in Automotive Development
By Naresh Kumar Kaderu, Solution Architect, Cyient
The world of automotive development has its own set of demands. The need for efficient and cost-effective software testing methods is one among them. The traditional reliance on hardware prototypes and ECUs for functional tests poses significant challenges in terms of time, cost, and availability. However, newer and revolutionary approaches allow for comprehensive software testing without the need for physical prototypes, offering automotive developers a powerful tool to enhance efficiency and accelerate the development process. The industry is gradually realizing the potential in the concept of virtual ECU validation, its benefits, and its ability to shape the future of mobility.
Historically, the unavailability of hardware prototypes during the development cycle has posed significant challenges for engineers. A recent study revealed that approximately 60% of development cycles lack prototypes, forcing engineers to resort to testing on actual vehicles, which is both time-consuming and expensive. This limitation restricts testing capabilities and often leads to the discovery of integration-related shortcomings only after ECU results become available. Additionally, with the shrinking development cycles in today’s market, the need for swift updates and design verification without hardware prototypes has become increasingly critical.
Introducing Virtual ECU Validation
A groundbreaking approach that enables software functionality to be tested without the need for hardware prototypes is Virtual ECU validation, often referred to as vECU. By creating a hardware-independent virtual environment, developers can simulate various scenarios and evaluate software functionality, interactions with environmental models, and component models at an early stage. This cost-effective method allows for comprehensive testing during the development phase, ensuring the usability of ECU software in the most efficient and viable way.
The Benefits of Virtual ECU Validation:
Early Discovery of Integration Issues: Virtual ECU validation facilitates the early detection of integration-related shortcomings, enabling engineers to address them promptly before moving to the next development stage. By eliminating the reliance on hardware prototypes, potential issues can be identified and resolved more efficiently, saving both time and resources.
Scalable Environment: The virtual ECU platform provides a scalable environment that can be adapted to suit specific testing requirements. By utilizing powerful CPUs, developers can run more tests in the same amount of time, enhancing productivity and accelerating the overall development process.
Reduced Validation Efforts: vECU validation significantly reduces the need for physical prototypes, minimizing validation efforts and associated costs. By leveraging the virtualized environment, developers can focus on testing the software stack intricacies without the constraints of hardware availability.
Stable and Reliable Testing Environment: The vECU platform offers a stable and reliable testing environment, free from the uncertainties and limitations of physical prototypes. This controlled setting enables precise testing and accurate evaluation of software functionality, ensuring robust performance in real-world scenarios.
Reuse of Available Hardware Test Cases: By decoupling software testing from hardware prototypes, virtual ECU validation allows for the reuse of available hardware test cases. This not only saves time but also ensures that valuable test scenarios are not lost during the development process.
Virtual ECUs can be categorized into different utilization levels, depending on their specific use cases:
● Level 0 vECU (Controller Model): This is the simplest vECU type, consisting of the controller model or the C code generated from it. Level 0 vECUs are primarily used to test the control algorithm itself.
● Level 1 vECU (Application Level): Level 1 vECUs contain production codes of the application software specific to the virtual ECU. They operate at signal levels without utilizing a bus or network.
● Level 2 vECU (Simulation BSW): Level 2 vECUs offer simulated basic software (BSW) functionalities in addition to the content of Level 1 vECUs. They can communicate at the signal level and also at the bus or network level.
● Level 3 vECU (Production BSW): Level 3 vECUs encompass not only production application software but also production basic software (BSW) for testing purposes. They enable the evaluation of a real ECU’s hardware-independent software and serve as a means to test the BSW itself at various test levels.
● Level 4 vECU (Target Binary): Level 4 vECUs represent the production code compiled for the real ECU. As the closest representation of a live system, Level 4 vECUs include hardware dependencies, allowing for the assessment of potential faults and issues.
vECU validation delivers an efficient approach to investigate and test ECU software in the system context during the early stages of development. This early validation of discrete sub-functions, known as frontloading, significantly improves software quality and enhances the overall development process. The collaborative nature of virtual ECU validation strengthens the synergy between automotive OEMs and suppliers, enabling them to work together seamlessly with the same artifacts. The realistic visualization capabilities provided by vECU testing make it user-friendly and facilitate the acceptance of validation results by different stakeholders. This approach not only saves time and cost but also enables ECU software to achieve higher maturity levels.
As the automotive industry embraces the era of software-defined vehicles and connectivity, virtual ECU validation emerges as one of the most powerful tools to test complex products at early stages. By virtualizing automotive ECUs on Windows PCs and integrating them with vehicle simulation models, certain development tasks can be efficiently moved from road or test rigs to cost-effective PC environments. This approach enables the moving of certain development tasks from road or test rigs and HiL (hardware-in-the-loop) to PCs, where they can often be performed faster and cheaper, aligning with the demands of the Autonomous, Connected, Electric, and Shared (ACES) mobility paradigm. With increased OEM investments in software-enabled features and connected vehicles, the automobile industry is poised for a significant transformation fueled by digital technologies.
Virtual ECU validation revolutionizes software testing in automotive development by eliminating the dependency on hardware prototypes and enabling comprehensive testing in a simulated environment. As the future of mobility unfolds, virtual ECU validation stands at the forefront of innovation, empowering automotive developers to deliver software-defined vehicles with increased efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and maturity.
