Towards a Globally Distributed Testing Network in the Automotive Industry

Digitalization has transformed many aspects of our lives, particularly in the automotive industry, where it has significantly impacted how cars are built, tested, and operated. Car manufacturers are increasingly required to shift their focus from hardware to software, a change that is accelerated by the rise of electric vehicles. As the industry increasingly embraces a tech company identity, software-based approaches and new technologies can enhance existing processes, reduce costs, and generate revenue. The integration testing of car electronic control units (ECUs) is a prime example of an area that can be optimized through software-based approaches. In the traditional process, suppliers design and create ECUs and their corresponding software in various locations worldwide. Once completed, the units are shipped to a central location where the car manufacturer physically connects them and conducts integration tests. However, this process can lead to expensive iterations because of found errors, which a virtual approach can address. An initial approach towards early integration testing through a globally accessible virtual testing platform is presented in this paper. Suppliers can leverage such a platform to connect their newly built ECUs, allowing car manufacturers to conduct integration tests early in the ECU's life cycle. This, in turn, reduces the overhead associated with physical transportation and facilitates early feedback, which can help identify and address issues much earlier in the development process. Overall, the proposed approach has great potential to enhance the integration testing process, resulting in significant benefits for all stakeholders involved. The contributions of this paper include an initial approach towards (i) a generic test specification that enables the definition of integration tests involving virtual and physical ECUs distributed among different suppliers, (ii) a hardware interface that enables suppliers to connect their ECUs to a virtual test environment remotely, and (iii) an initial architecture for the virtual test platform, which allows integration testing throughout multiple distributed ECUs.