No More “Table-Based” Testing: Ensuring Business Continuity through Test Automation

The client is a well-known American company focused on automotive solutions. Different car brands use their automotive multimedia systems and head units across the world.

Their product line includes a wide range of head units with different capabilities depending on the car model. Additional devices and services, like smartphones, USB multimedia devices, rear and front cameras, navigation systems, satellite radios, and sensors interact with the head units, allowing customers to get the best-in-class experience while driving.

Challenge

The client wanted to develop an automated verification process for their existing solutions. However, they relied heavily on manual testing conducted on real hardware, with each QA engineer managing multiple units on their desk. This test setup required electrical wiring and was restricted to the office due to safety regulations.

Additionally, testing was only limited to unit-level checks and was performed late in the development cycle. Their Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline was still in its infancy stage, with no nightly builds or automated tests.

With limited test resources, the client was forced to reduce the scope of regression testing, which increased the risk of overlooking issues and defects.

The result was low test coverage, high fault slip-through, and frequent firefighting during integrations and bug fixes—delaying time-to-market for each release.

Solution

Our team started with an on-site knowledge transfer before proposing a solution for the client. We then developed an end-to-end test system that enabled remote access to test equipment. This included:

1. A test stand with connected devices housed in a dedicated test lab 
2. A cloud-based test automation platform 

Our engineers designed, assembled, and developed the platform based on open-source technologies, complete with custom libraries to support testing for a wide variety of vehicle digital components across multiple interfaces: USB, CAN, LIN, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and more.

We started by supporting QNX-based IVI systems, and over time expanded the framework to cover Android-based IVIs, electronic instrument clusters, and converged units used across different vehicle models and brands.

We also automated several thousand existing test cases. Our team, in cooperation with the client’s engineers, developed a strategy for launching automated tests and automatic reporting through CI/CD pipelines (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery), enabling regular automated test execution for a wide range of device types and products under different operating systems.

Our solution also included:

• Keyword-based scripting to simplify test development
• Computer vision and OCR support for real-world UI interactions

Impact

With a modernized testing approach, the company achieved measurable improvements across operations, quality, and speed:

• Business continuity: A dedicated test lab enabled remote work, ensuring uninterrupted operations during the 2020 pandemic.
• Engineering efficiency: Test automation significantly reduced manual effort while maintaining product quality.
• Faster delivery: Defects were caught earlier, speeding up the release cycle without increasing costs.

By modernizing their testing approach, the company was able to deliver a new generation of products with faster turnaround times and higher confidence in quality, helping them stay competitive in the automotive technology market.