EQUITAS: A tool-chain for functional safety and reliability improvement in automotive systems

Abstract To support advanced features such as hybrid engine control, intelligent energy management, and advanced driver assistance systems, automotive embedded systems must use advanced technologies. As a result, systems are becoming distributed and include dozens of Electronic Control Units (ECU). On the one hand, this tendency raises the issue of robustness and reliability, due to the increase in the error ratio with the integration level and the clock frequency. On the other hand, due to a lack of automation, software Validation and Verification (V&V) tends to swallow up 40% to 50% of the total development cost. The ``Enhanced Quality Using Intensive Test Analysis on Simulators'' (EQUITAS 1 ) project aims (1) to improve reliability and functional safety and (2) to limit the impact of software V&V on embedded systems costs and time-to-market. These two achievements are obtained by (1) developing a continuous tool-chain to automate the V&V process, (2) improving the relevance of the test campaigns by detecting redundant tests using equivalence classes, (3) providing assistance for hardware failure effect analysis (FMEA) and finally (4) assessing the tool-chain under the ISO 26262 requirements.