Modern embedded systems are increasingly complex and contain multiple software layers from BSP (Board Support Packages) to OS to middleware to AI (Artificial Intelligence) algorithms like perception and voice recognition. Integrations of inter-layer and intra-layer in embedded systems provide dedicated services such as taking a picture or movie-streaming. Accordingly, it gets more complicated to find out the root cause of a system failure. This industrial proposal describes a difficulty of testing embedded systems, and presents a case study in terms of integration testing.

Embedded systems are becoming increasingly ubiquitous, controlling a wide variety of popular and safety-critical devices. Effective testing techniques could improve the dependability of these systems. In prior work we presented an approach for testing embedded systems, focusing on embedded system applications and the tasks that comprise them. In this work we focus on a second but equally important aspect of testing embedded systems, namely, the need to provide observability of system behavior sufficient to allow engineers to detect failures. We present several property-based oracles that can be instantiated in embedded systems through program analysis and instrumentation, and can detect failures for which simple output-based oracles are inadequate. An empirical study of our approach shows that it can be effective.

Real-time embedded systems (RTESs) are becoming increasingly ubiquitous, controlling a wide variety of popular and safety-critical devices. Effective testing techniques could improve the dependability of these systems. In this paper we present an approach for testing RTESs, intended specifically to help RTES application developers detect faults related to functional correctness. Our approach consists of two techniques that focus on exercising the interactions between system layers and between the multiple user tasks that enact application behaviors. We present results of an empirical study that shows that our techniques are effective at detecting faults.

An embedded system is an electronically controlled system combining hardware and software. Many systems used in real life such as power plants, medical instrument systems and home appliances are embedded. However, studies related to embedded system testing are insufficient. In embedded systems, it is necessary to develop a test technique to detect faults in interaction between hardware and software. We propose a test data selection technique using fault injection for the interaction between hardware and software. The proposed test data selection technique first simulates behavior of a software program from requirements specification. Hardware faults, after being converted to software faults, are then injected into the simulated program. We finally select effective test data to detect faults caused by the interactions between hardware and software. We apply our technique to a digital plant protection system and evaluate the effectiveness of selected test data through experiments.