Lear Reduces Embedded Software Issues Using the NI HIL Platform
"NI VeriStand has played a significant
role in achieving the quality and
reliability standards that have helped us
win new automotive business."
– Jason G. Bauman, Lear Corporation
The Challenge:
Maintaining quality and reliability standards amidst the growing complexity
of our embedded electronics products while meeting budget and schedule
targets.
The Solution:
Our new HIL testing platfom, based on NI
Veristand, incorporates real-time test automation
capabilities.
Adopting a new hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test platform based on NI
VeriStand real-time testing software and PXI hardware that provide the
flexibility, efficiency, and intuitiveness necessary to address our current
requirements with the ability to scale to future needs as we continue to
expand our products.
Author(s):
Jason G. Bauman - Lear Corporation
Darryn LaZar - Wineman Technology Inc.
Lear Corporation’s Electronics division designs and manufactures embedded control electronics for automotive applications including
interior and exterior lighting control, power management systems, locking control, and tire pressure monitoring systems. Embedded
software is a major component of these products and the content and complexity of this software is growing exponentially. We use
hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing extensively because it allows us to efficiently scale testing capacity and increase test coverage to
address these growing complexities. However, our previous HIL test platform did not provide the stability, intuitiveness, or flexibility
necessary to achieve our desired quality standards.
Real-Time Stimulus Profiles with NI VeriStand
After researching the available options, it became clear that the NI HIL testing platform offered the progressive approach to HIL testing
we needed to meet our present and future challenges. We used NI VeriStand real-time testing software to implement our HIL testing
applications because it provided a variety of powerful, configuration-based features including real-time I/O interfaces, triggerable data
logging, a run-time editable user interface, and easy integration to our system models. However, the greatest benefit of using NI
VeriStand is real-time test automation capabilities.
NI VeriStand offers several ways to create the complex stimulus profiles that our test strategies required. The tools are very intuitive,
allowing our test engineers to implement test programs quickly and with a short learning curve. The real-time stimulus profile tools
work the way that a test engineer thinks and does not require knowledge of additional programming languages to utilize them. With
this capability, our engineers are able to focus on their jobs – identifying potential module failures – which ultimately results in more
issues identified and resolved. Furthermore, the openness of the environment allows us to quickly supplement its capabilities with test
scripts created from other packages, giving us the freedom to use test scripts from a variety of sources.
While we perform most of our test scenarios using test automation, NI VeriStand also allows us to easily step through our test cases
manually, which has proven to be an invaluable tool for debugging the issues we find. We can switch from an automated test to
interactive root-cause analysis in minutes. By switching in tandem with our embedded software debugging tools, we can step through
our test scenarios and embedded software code execution simultaneously to more efficiently identify and fix the issues.
Building a Multipurpose Test System with NI RIO
Additionally, we were able to create HIL test systems that can be used to test a variety of products with only test software and wiring
harness changes because we used the field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based NI reconfigurable I/O (RIO) interfaces for our
analog and digital I/O channels. This ability has made it possible to get more use of our test systems and increase testing capacity.
High-Performance Vehicle Bus Interfaces
Also, we used the NI-XNET vehicle bus cards, which provided a high-performance interface to our vehicle buses with the ability to use
and modify our vehicle bus database files for rapid configuration and updates to our vehicle networks. NI-XNET combined with the
openness of NI VeriStand also allowed easy implementation of our own protocol layers.
HIL Test System Customization
To implement the different NI-RIO FPGA personalities, custom protocols layers, and other NI VeriStand modifications, we worked with
Wineman Technologies Inc., a local integration partner of National Instruments with extensive experience in HIL test system
development and NI hardware and software tools. They helped us quickly adapt the new HIL test system providing timely
communication and knowledgeable support to ensure success in updating a critical component in our product development.
Looking to the Future
A major factor in our decision to use the NI HIL test platform was the open hardware and software environment. This open architecture
is already providing the benefits that we expected as our HIL test system requirements expand to include wireless and high-voltage
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applications. We are currently adding high-voltage loads and power supplies to help implement more extensive testing of our Hybrid
Charger product line. We are also adding RF transmission and receiver capabilities to our HIL test systems to use a single system to
simulate the complete variety of devices that our products will interface with as well as to insert more detailed RF signal and protocol
faults. The open hardware and software tools in the NI HIL platform is making it possible to quickly and efficiently expand these
systems by taking advantage of third-party hardware components and ready-to-use software add-ons widely available in the NI
development community.
Impact on Our Business
We have been running our NI VeriStand and PXI-based HIL systems continually for more than one year without experiencing a tester
failure. This stability combined with the efficiency gains achieved with NI VeriStand and the NI hardware products has allowed our
team to identify more issues during the early stages of development and resolve them faster, which has decreased our warranty
issues and returns.
Contact Information
Jason G. Bauman
jbauman@lear.com
http://www.poweringideasthatdeliver.lear.com
Darryn LaZar
dlazar@winemantech.com
www.winemantech.com
Our new HIL testing platfom, based on NI Veristand, incorporates real-time test automation capabilities.
Our HIL hardware platform, based on NI tools.
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PXI hardware provides the flexibility, efficiency, and intuitiveness necessary to address our current requirements with the ability to
scale to future needs as we continue to expand our products.
Lear HIL Automated Test System Breakout Box
Next Steps
Watch a webcast to understand how HIL testing improves control system validation
Get started with NI VeriStand
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