Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems
Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems

XIVT

eXcellence In Variant Testing

VW, Gläserne Manufaktur in Dresden, Herstellung des E-Golfs
© Philipp Plum / Fraunhofer FOKUS

Whether in driver assistance systems, such as pedestrian recognition, in electrical traction control for trains, highly individualized consumer electronics or in the configurative industrial production of machine elements – such highly complex applications require methods and tools with which the quality of the systems can be guaranteed.

In the XIVT project, automated test methods for variant-rich systems are being developed. These test methods are constantly evaluated within the framework of the project and tested in applications of the industry partners of the project in order to confirm the practical usefulness. This ensures that the methods developed contribute to an increased test coverage and more flexible production processes, thereby increasing the overall quality of the products.

Goals

In order to achieve this goal, the first step is to analyze the requirements of various industrial applications areas. Test generation is based on the systemic level: starting from individual single variants, test cases are derived which test the properties on systemic level. In order to use test resources effectively, an application-specific test prioritization is carried out based on existing knowledge about the systems to be tested. A special focus will be placed on natural language processing and machine learning with the aim of simplifying the currently cumbersome process of formulating complicated test cases, which can be only be carried out with professional knowledge, in the long term.

XVIT Services Übersicht: Security and Safety
© Fraunhofer FOKUS

Structure

The XIVT project consists of six different work packages, which are divided between the project partners according to their expertise:

  • Work Package 1 specifies and implements the use cases of the industry partners.
  • Work Package 2 develops solutions for prioritizing and selecting test cases.
  • Work Package 3 develops new test generation processes und test executions for variant and configurable systems.
  • Work Package 4 defines the software architecture and develops a reference platform which can be extended by partner partner-specific additions through suitable APIs
  • Work Package 5 will be responsible for the distribution and utilization of the project results for the industry, science, public administration and standardization bodies.
  • Work Packages 6 contains the project management of XIVT.

The project partners are from Europe and North America. The German sub-consortium was formed around the use cases “Automotive” and “Industrial Production” and consists of industry partners and research organization such as Fraunhofer FOKUS and the Institute for Automation and Communication (ifak). Due to its expertise in the areas of model-based testing, software engineering, design and execution of test automation, as well as test process automation, Fraunhofer FOKUS takes the lead in the area of test configuration.   

Project partners

The XIVT consortium consists of 23 partners from Germany, Sweden, Canada, Portugal and Turkey. The Swedish-Canadian company Bombardier is the central coordinator of the project. Alongside them, thirteen other industry partners are involved, among them five small and medium sized-enterprises, as well as six research and academic facilities. Apart from Fraunhofer FOKUS, EKS InTec, Expleo Germany, FFT Produktionssyteme, the Institute for Automation and Communication (ifak), and Model Engineering Solutions are part of the German sub-consortium.