Study and implementation of a software prototype for reliability evaluation of vehicular electronic systems

The automotive industry is constantly evolving due to growing technology. Modern knowledge in systems control and embedded software architectures has made it possible to equip the latest commercial vehicles with advanced electronic systems, to offer a constantly connected driving experience and actively guarantee the safety of drivers and passengers. Certainly, one of the main objectives to be achieved when it comes to innovating a vehicle equipped with advanced systems is to provide a reliable and efficient solution, as complex integration through multiple on-board systems is required. Indeed, the high complexity of a vehicle's electronic architecture requires a time-consuming and expensive simulation phase for component verification and validation. To this purpose, the thesis proposes the implementation of a software prototype capable of faithfully reproducing the behaviour of the commercial vehicle infotainment system. The prototype emulates it in terms of logical architecture, user interface and telematics applications, taking into consideration the challenging scenario of creating a communication interface between the telematics Electronic Control Unit (ECU) and a personal computer. With this, the prototype provides an easily accessible testing environment for this case of integration of vehicular electronic units. It took some preliminary steps to arrive at this implementation. Initially there is an in-depth study of the vehicle, to understand the functional aspects of the electronic architecture and communication between the systems, up to the introduction of software errors and an initial classification of the problems encountered. Subsequently, an exemplary case of integration between the various vehicular electronic systems, which required various technical revisions, is sought. Then the history of the software issues encountered and the related actions taken is created. Considering that the validation operations are quite complex and repetitive, the main objective of the software prototype is to simplify the testing of the telematics electronic control unit in the software integration with the infotainment system. The concerned ECU was designed to manage the telematics and connectivity functionalities, making the contents displayed on the infotainment system available. Automated testing sessions for component validation are performed using an innovative approach. The instructions for the test are inserted into a JSON file, using a template created specifically for the prototype. Then, through an iterative process, the instructions are converted into actions to be performed on th Le sessioni di testing automatizzato per la convalida dei componenti vengono eseguite mediante un approccio innovativo. All’interno di un file JSON vengono inserite le istruzioni per il test, utilizzando un modello creato appositamente per il prototipo. Attraverso un processo iterativo poi, le istruzioni vengono convertite in azioni da eseguire sulla unità di controllo. La risposta ricevuta viene elaborata attraverso un algoritmo che confronta il comportamento atteso con quello ottenuto. Di conseguenza, una volta ottenuta un'opportuna percentuale di parametri corrispondenti, la configurazione del software si assume accettabile e il test è superato. L’intera applicazione è stata sviluppata con la piattaforma .NET, seguendo il pattern architetturale MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) per migliorare la riusabilità e la manutenibilità del codice. Il linguaggio di programmazione utilizzato è C-sharp (C#).