Test & measurement
Courtesy of NIWeek 2018
Advancing electrification of Mazda vehicles
A team at Mazda has leveraged the NI test platform and ecosystem to incorporate not only HILS, but also robots, an image processing system, a speech synthesis system, a noise simulator, and a GPS simulator to build an integrated automated test system for electronic components
automated windshield wipers and door locks, electronics are now a part of many vehicular components, including lighting, air-conditioning, powertrain, infotainment, and even various kinds of safety systems. Initially, vehicles were equipped with only a few CPUs. Nowadays, the number of CPUs in a vehicle is close to one hundred. To deliver high quality products to
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The capability to utilise virtual components enables flexible testing
customers, Mazda’s Electronics Testing and Research Group evaluates the ‘logic’ and ‘robustness’ of all electronic components. ‘Logic’ refers to the functionality of each electronic component. To understand the concept of ‘robustness’, one must first understand
t is common knowledge that vehicles are rapidly incorporating more and more electronics. Beginning with
that operating environments of electronic components are not always in the ideal state. For example, components may be exposed to extreme conditions, such as a fluctuating power supply voltage, high levels of noise, or the application of input signals of undesirable quality. ‘Robustness’ refers to the components’ ability to operate with the correct logic in extreme environments. A team at Mazda, therefore, decided to evaluate the extent to which each electronic component could withstand these difficult conditions.
THe CHALLeNGe The logic and robustness of electronic components have always been evaluated. In the days when there were only a few kinds of electronic components performing simple functions, components were tested individually in specially prepared environments. However, as the variety and functional complexity of electronic components increased, several issues surfaced. Nowadays, there is communication between multiple electronic component systems, and increasingly, one system’s operation is dependent on results from other systems. In addition to testing systems individually, multi-system tests must be conducted to meaningfully evaluate the function of such systems. Furthermore, it is imperative that a systems’ robustness
Instrumentation Monthly October 2018
also be evaluated. Yet as the variety of components and units continue to increase, the number of items to be evaluated increase exponentially. Thus, it became clear to the team that the evaluation system would need to be automated. Mazda had been aware of these needs
for roughly a decade. However, an evaluation system meeting all needs did not exist. Given the situation, the team decided to tackle this gap head-on. In other words, the company decided to build—and automate—a system to verify the logic and evaluate the robustness of electronic components operating cooperatively from the ground up.
THe SoLuTIoN/BeNefITS The system Mazda needed to build was going to be extremely large scale and complex. Accordingly, the development work was forecasted to take several years and to be conducted in stages. The Stage-1 system was comprised of the following elements: a HILS (Hardware- in-the-Loop Simulation) engine, a robot, and an image processing system. For the HILS engine, a National Instruments (NI) HILS system comprised of PXI (PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation) products and RIO (reconfigurable I/O) module was used. The software operating on these hardware products
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