10 YE ARS AUTOSAR ME THOD OLO GY

AUTHORS

AGILE DEVELOPMENT
WITH AUTOSAR
Agile development with AUTOSAR seems to be a contradiction in itself,
but the standard enables truly agile development methods. These

DIPL.-ING. (FH)
JOACHIM LCHNER
is Field Application Engineer
for AUTOSAR Solutions
at Etas in Stuttgart (Germany).

DIPL.-ING., DIPL.-BETRIEBSWIRT
MICHEL DIETRICH
is Product Manager for the
Virtual Validation Platform
at Etas in Stuttgart (Germany).

are based on self-organising and cross-functional teams which work

interactively on incremental project steps. Continuous integration and
validation are a key factor for success. This is also true when there is
an exchange of software components among distributed development
partners, who require the ability to exchange results without the
availability of the source code. Therefore, Etas provides a complete
virtual AUTOSAR electronic control unit environment.

RELIABLE TESTS IN VIRTUAL SETUPS

Agile development methods are very

useful when requirements change during the development cycle, for example,
because the complete system is new and
not yet thoroughly specified. For the
incremental development steps of the
agile process, continuous integration and
validation is a key factor for success.
The development and continuous integration often must start for early portions
of the software even before any physical
Electronic Control Unit (ECU) hardware is
available. This is where the AUTOSAR
architecture can bring support: It was specifically designed to facilitate the simple
exchange of individual software elements
and to separate the hardware dependent
and independent software parts. Due to
the clear interface descriptions in AUTOSAR, it becomes easy to focus on specific
portions of functionality and simulate the

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rest virtually, separating those parts from

the hardware dependency.
An important requirement for reliable
tests in virtual setups is the time synchronisation between the environment
model and the software under test
especially in the early phases of development. If this is guaranteed, automated
tests can be executed rapidly and reliably
due to the deterministic results. Additionally, single-step debugging for both
the ECU software and the test script also
requires such time synchronisation
that is, if virtual time stops for one,
it should be stopped for all.
VIRTUAL VALIDATION
PLATFORM ON PC

But even before an integration of all software components can take place, the
function or software developer faces difficulties testing the AUTOSAR code on

DIPL.-ING. (FH) JRGEN CREPIN

is responsible for Communication of
Software Engineering and Test
Solutions at Etas in Stuttgart
(Germany).

the PC. To overcome these challenges,

Etas offers a complete virtual AUTOSAR
ECU environment running on the PC
called Etas Isolar-Eve. It includes an
automated adapter generator that generates missing AUTOSAR software components or architectural elements to allow
the validation to start even with partial
configurations. This allows the developer
to test the software without any changes
to the source code, using a virtual environment right from the very early stages
of development.
AUTOSARs well-defined line between
the hardware dependent and independent software means that not only the
application software and the runtime
environment (RTE) are hardware independent, but also a substantial part of
the basic software (BSW). By providing
the hardware dependent parts, such as
the AUTOSAR operating system (OS) and
the Microcontroller Abstraction Layer

 The hardware independence of AUTOSAR allows early validation and a high degree of reuse

(MCAL) for a PC platform, it makes it

possible to deploy and run a big portion
of the ECU intended embedded software
without reliance on the ECU hardware,
. The virtual validation platform comes
with an RTE, AUTOSAR OS and MCAL
generator for the PC, allowing both realtime and non-real-time executions,
which is typically much faster than realtime due to the power of PC hardware.
This covers various use cases such as
debugging of C-Software Components
(SWC), testing of BSW or complete ECU
software strategies or networks, in real
time at the workspace or even in a vehicle. It can be used at many different
development steps, for example the basic
or application software development, the
systems integration of ECU networks or
acceptance tests. This allows the use of
different configurations and user interfaces and offers an attractive solution for
example for real-time prototyping, physical network integration, and fault injection without hardware restrictions, .
In addition, Etas provides comprehensive solutions and expert consulting for
AUTOSAR development with more than
ten years of AUTOSAR experience, ,
providing individual training, project
management, change management, process and methods analysis, and operative support.

ware. This is achieved through the provision of an AUTOSAR hardware

abstraction for the PC. It allows the classical Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) test
bench and vehicle test to focus more on
system behaviour rather than on finding
software bugs. Additionally, the standardisation of AUTOSAR allows the independent development at different locations and suppliers. Software parts,
which are not unique selling points, can
be easily bought and reused, for example
AUTOSAR BSW. The result is a dramatic
improvement in time and quality at distributed and agile software development
for future programs.
The advantages of virtual validations

UNDERSTAND THE PROCESS

The described functionality allows a

common integration process of software
components at the OEMs and the suppliers independent of the associated hardOctober 2013

AUTOSAR

Comprehensive solutions for AUTOSAR

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