Enhancing Safety-Critical Brake System Testing with Vector SIL over Complex Vector HIL

Advanced vehicle technologies that substitute or assist the driver are crucial and safety-critical elements, including independently acting electronic control units. A key element of vehicle road safety is its behavior on the road, influenced by various factors such as adhesion and physical forces. Self-activating brake systems, including related sensors and processing units, are vital for modern autonomous vehicles. The complexity of software in vehicle electronic control units (ECUs) has significantly increased, making traditional testing methods inadequate. This paper explores the use of Software-in-the-Loop (SIL) and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) testing methods in an automated test environment to enhance software development and testing processes. It can be demonstrated that there is interoperability between the HIL and SIL systems using the same test case implementation in the Vector CANoe simulation environment. As a result, it can be demonstrated that in the case of a safety-critical function, such as an ABS (anti-lock brake system) control intervention, the ECU control software behaves the same in both the HIL and SIL simulation environments.