An integrated testing platform for automotive and industrial electronic control units

Any person involved in R&D activities is aware about the importance of testing. Depending on the type of R&D field, test associated costs can vary between 25% of the total costs to 80%. The importance of this activity is not always fully understood nor financially supported. Also, the high pressure put on reducing the time to market (TTM) for new products leads to reductions being made sometimes in the detriment of the testing activities [1]. Therefore the efficiency and speed of the testing processes, in different stages of the product development, has to increase with every intended reduction for the TTM. This paper presents an integrated test platform which targets the testing of electronic control units (ECUs) from the automotive field as well as other industrial controllers and hardware solutions. It includes the hardware test equipment and the software tools developed for this purpose.