Maneuver-Based Testing of Integrated, Highly Interconnected Safety Systems

Active safety and passive safety were long viewed as separate entities of automotive safety systems, while current trends point toward networks and integration. In addition to signals from the crash phase, modern passive safety systems use pre-crash information from other systems (such as ESC). This new system interdependence leads to new development requirements. Whenever communication takes place across several levels such as different bus systems with many bus participants, reliability and data consistency have to be assured at all times. Network intensification and a large number of variants dramatically increase the complexities of fault protection and control unit tests during the development process. This requires new types of test systems with corresponding interfaces and advanced simulation tools for efficient, cost-effective and seamless testing. The test system presented here uses highly capable vehicle dynamics and driver simulations with integrated crash data and fault feed-in. Normal driving conditions as well as pre-crash and in-crash scenarios were implemented to conduct a realistic test (illustrated here by the example of a safety control unit). The test was run by defining the corresponding driving maneuvers in extensive test catalogs, analogous to real-world tests. This creates the basis for a highly capable, seamless test platform. In addition, testing depth and fault detection probability can be significantly increased through a flexible and comprehensive selection of test cases.