HYDRIVE References

1,000 forage harvester tests in one night

HiL simulators for automated software testing | by Stefan Fuder

Hydrive has helped Claas Selbstfahrende Erntemaschinen GmbH with setting up a Hardware-in-the-Loop test bench for a forage harvester using Vector products, in addition to creating a library of individual test steps that can be combined to produce further test scenarios. Over 1,000 tests have been programmed so far and can now be performed automatically on each piece of new software.

1000 Tests in einer Nacht für Feldhäcksler der Firma Claas

The latest generation of agricultural machinery is characterised by a huge number of electronic components and automatic functions. Safety functions define the machine’s behaviour in the event of electrical faults. This combination of automatic functions and possible errors results in thousands of scenarios that have to be tested before the machines can be delivered in series. Hydrive Engineering’s hardware-in-the-loop technologies and automated software tests can reduce the time required for this from several weeks to just a few hours.

Up to now, software tests have mainly been performed manually by engineers on real test machines. Hardware-in-the-loop technologies, on the other hand, allow real electronic control units to be connected to and tested on virtual machine models. Test scenarios are programmed, allowing tests to be carried out and documented automatically. Once programmed, tests can be repeated as often as required at no additional expense.