A Priori Test Coverage Estimation for Automated Production Systems - Using Generated Behavior Models for Coverage Calculation

Automated production systems need to be thoroughly tested. For this, the fully integrated system, consisting of software and hardware, is investigated for remaining bugs using system tests. Unlike unit tests, these tests involve human interaction with the system and are mostly performed manually, without any tool support for their simulation or adequacy examination. Thus, important functionality can be overlooked during testing, decreasing the overall system quality. Coverage measurement during testing can be a valuable support for assessing test adequacy, but requires instrumentation that might influence the real time behavior of the system. Further, test adequacy cannot be calculated until all tests have been executed. To tackle these problems, we propose an approach that aims at estimating coverage criteria prior to system test execution at the aPS and without instrumenting the code or defining hardware simulations. To this end, the nominal hardware behavior and human interaction models are derived from existing integration tests, enabling a priori estimation of the system test coverage via simulation of the software along with the deduced behavior.     «

Automated production systems need to be thoroughly tested. For this, the fully integrated system, consisting of software and hardware, is investigated for remaining bugs using system tests. Unlike unit tests, these tests involve human interaction with the system and are mostly performed manually, without any tool support for their simulation or adequacy examination. Thus, important functionality can be overlooked during testing, decreasing the overall system quality. Coverage measurement during...     »