Test Automation for an Automotive Head Unit

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

The 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 head units, allowing customers to get the best in class experience while driving.

Challenge

The customer wanted to develop an automated verification process for their existing solutions. The customer had a number of devices and OEM solutions which were taken into account during automation testing.

By the time the customer came to us, most functional test cases were only manual and the whole process was rather slow. Having limited test resources, the customer reduced the scope of regression testing, thus increasing the risk of overlooking issues and defects. The customer needed to improve the percentage of test coverage for each release and reduce the time-to-market.

Solution

Our team started with an on-site knowledge transfer before proposing a solution for the customer and developing a test automation platform. Building the local test lab with direct access to the test equipment allowed our team to cover as many use cases as possible and develop the highly effective test automation solution.

Our engineers designed, assembled and developed a test automation solution for head units and multimedia systems that consisted of hardware and software components and later became a part of the Continuous Integration and Delivery processes. This solution supports OCR and Computer Vision and interacts with head units and multimedia systems through CAN, serial bus, USB subsystem and audio.

We also migrated some of the existing manual test cases to automated test cases. Additionally, our team, in cooperation with customer’s engineers, developed a strategy for launching automated tests and automatic reporting through a Continuous Integration approach, thus enabling regular automated test execution for a wide range of device types and products.

Results

The customer increased testing efficiency for the maintenance and feature releases while maintaining high product quality, with no additional costs. As a result, the new generation of products introduced ensured the customer would maintain a leading position in respective market segments, especially in the automotive sector.

Features