Towards continuous integration for cyber-physical systems on the example of self-driving miniature cars

Book chapter, 2014

Today's consumer life is already pervasively supported by visible and unnoticeable technology. We are consuming information flows, contributing within social webs, and integrating our virtual communities into an interconnected lifestyle. This interconnected and assisted way of living is realized by various products ranging from consumer electronics products like smartphones and wearable computing up to safety-critical systems like intelligent cars, which aim for unnoticeably protecting the user and its surroundings in critical situations. And at the end of this decade, the technology of a self-driving car is reported to be available for consumers enabling various opportunities for new businesses. From consumer-level technology like smartphones, smart TVs, or laptops, users are used to feature extensions and evolution over time by having automated application and operating system updates. Thus, further system features are continuously rolled out on a large user base enabling new use cases. Nowadays, the digitally connected lifestyle integrates components like wearable computing and smart mobility, where an OEM could hardly anticipate the nearly limitless variety of complex combinations. The trend of a continuously evolving user-experience in terms of new features and functionalities puts further challenges, requirements, and constraints on a system provider to maintain the expected high quality of the product and in the future of the interconnected and integrated product network. This article presents the design of a simulation-based testing and integration approach for cyber-physical systems by using self-driving miniature cars as the running example.