Enabling Credibility for Virtual Testing of Autonomous Vehicles by Adapting DevOps to Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulations

The accelerated development of autonomous vehicle (AV) software necessitates the implementation of an agile approach. As real-world testing is insufficient from an economical and technical point of view, it is necessary to provide credible virtual test systems, such as Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) simulations, during this iterative development process. This paper demonstrates the application of the DevOps methodology to the development of HiL simulations to facilitate the delivery of incremental enhancements while ensuring the reliability through comprehensive testing in order to address the challenges posed by increasing demands for speed, flexibility, documentation, credibility assessment and traceability to the superior vehicle software development. The application of the process and its key technologies results in a DevOps platform as an end-to-end solution with high automation.