AVS: A Test Suite for Automatically Generated Code

(Presented at Mathworks Automotive Conference, June 19. - 20., 2007, Hyatt Regency Dearborn, Dearborn MI, USA)

Ekkehard Pofahl, Ford Motor Company, et al.

As automatically generated code is planned for use in highly safety-relevant automotive electronics (such as for chassis, brakes, and vehicle stability control), Ford of Europe and Continental Automotive Systems saw a necessity to provide measures that would ensure at least the same safety integrity for automatically generated code as is required for hand-coded electronic control units (ECUs), mostly using C as the programming language.

In order to validate the quality and robustness of the code generator as well as the downstream tool chain (for example, the compiler and linker), they developed the Automotive Code Validation Suite, or AVS, for automatically generated code. This suite is employed to check transformation from the graphical design down to the final executable on different target platforms. Its processor-in-the-loop (PIL) and target-in-the-loop (TIL) testing capabilities permit the actual target hardware (ECU) or a target-like hardware (evaluation board) to be incorporated into the validation. The versatile architecture of the AVS is ideally suited for optimization-level validation (OLV) and regression testing. AVS allows easy adaptation to various tool chains and hardware environments (for example, the code generator, compiler, linker, and microcontroller).

Complete presentation

Complete paper on request

revised : Juli 2007