No abstract

No abstract

Innovative techniques to validate software are needed to reduce cost and increase software quality.This research aims to check if two rule‐based expert systems (EXs) combined with dynamic‐link libraries (dlls) perform better than other techniques widely employed in the automotive sector when validating the engine electronic control unit (ECU) software by using a hardware‐in‐the‐loop (HIL) simulation.To perform this research, 15 software modules (SMs) of different complexities were chosen to be validated in an HIL simulation by using different techniques such as the manual execution, the tester‐in‐the‐loop, the model‐based testing, a rule‐based EX, and the combination of two EXs to establish the code and functional coverage, the productivity gain, the number of bugs found, potential limitations of each technique, and the success rate of the HIL simulation. The test cases used are described in‐depth in Section 2.The enhancement, which dlls and EXs offer, depends on the number of states in the functional model used in the EXs and the number of subintervals in which the SM inputs can be divided. A range between 6 and 16 more bugs can be detected when using two EXs. The HIL enhancement can reach 6%, 16.8%, and 18% depending on the SM complexity.

New and innovative techniques to validate software are needed to reduce cost and increase software quality. This research focuses on the validation of engine electronic control unit software by using expert systems (EXs) and dynamic link libraries (dlls) with the aim of checking if this technique performs better than traditional ones. To do this, a test-case database was built and run by using hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulations to validate a series of software modules (SMs) by using these techniques: the tester-in-the-loop, automation by using a Python script, the model-based testing and EXs combined with dlls with the aim of assessing several factors such as: productivity gain, bug detection skills, functional coverage assessment, ease to automate test-cases among others. Dlls and EXs improve the HIL success rate by 4.8%, 6% and 20% at least, for simple, fairly-complex, and highly-complex SMs, respectively. Between 9 and 13 more bugs were found when using the EXs and dlls compared with other techniques. Two of the bugs would have required software not initially planned as they were linked to environmental policies. The proposed technique can be applied to any types of a SM, especially in those cases in which traditional validation techniques fail.

Designing eco-friendly products involves energy efficiency improvements. Eco-friendly products must consider not only raw materials and manufacturing processes to improve energy efficiency but also energy needed when designing them. This research shows how eco-routing (ER), eco-charging (EC), eco-driving (EDR), vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and electric vehicles (EVs) can contribute to the reduction of energy consumption during product design. To do this, a group of 44 engineers assigned to the project was chosen to assess the total energy available for V2G when driving EVs from their homes to the design center by using ER, ED and EC by running an application coded by the authors. The energy stored in EVs was used to quantify the reduction in energy consumption of the buildings present in the design center. The results show that the energy saving ranges from 2.89% to 6.9% per day—in other words, 93 kWh per day during the design process. In addition, the fact of making the design process greener implies that renewable energies (REs) are integrated better during the design process. By running the application, drivers are informed about the RE mix when the charging process takes place. Finally, this research shows that current policies make V2G and vehicle-to-home techniques not compatible.