Automatic Test Bench—ATB

The ATB is a modular testing system that is used as a tool for testing control units. It was developed by Areus together with an OEM from the automotive industry making it perfectly tailored to the existing requirements in the market.

The main area of application of the ATB is in the field of vehicle telematics and diagnostics. Each development status of the individual control units and the network of all control units must be thoroughly tested. There are defined error cases that have to be repeatedly produced, detected and analyzed. For this purpose, we have developed a hardware and software solution called the Automatic Test Bench (ATB).

To ensure that a potential error is detected, this is already tested in the development phase. Errors are deliberately produced and checked to see if they are detected as well as saved. All this and more can be achieved automatically with the ATB.

The ATB’s hardware is highly modular due to the sheer variety of signals and tests. The minimum unit is the KIO card with integrated microcontroller and a plug-in module called “PiggyPack”. There are almost no limits to complex expansion, which means that several KIO cards and PiggyPacks can also be integrated as a complete system in a 19” rack.

This modularity offers several advantages:

Minimal space requirements
Hardware tailored exactly to requirements
Easy extendability
Reusability

Areus has the right PiggyPack in its program for almost any test case. This enables a very wide range of tests to be covered. Some examples are:

Antenna tests (e.g. AM, FM, Bluetooth, WLAN, DAB)
Loud speaker tests
Power supply tests
Data transmission tests (USB)
Video tests (LVDS, if applicable, also HSVL)
Short circuit tests to ground, power supply or other signals
Interruption tests, cable breakage (open load)
Load test of the control unit outputs via programmable resistor cascades.
Control of external devices, e.g. voltage generators for emulation of a startup process or RF generators for antenna/tuner tests

Self-monitoring:

Our system permanently monitors itself. To make sure that the test cases are really produced, an intelligent hardware and software check the switching operations of the hardware. Simple, predefined commands can be combined into test schedules in the software using drag and drop. This allows the test engineer to concentrate on the actual testing.

Due to the modularity and ever-increasing complexity in the test environment, Areus supports its customers throughout the entire project phase, from the specification to the finished connection cable of the control units. Together with the customer, the requirements are analyzed, specified and converted into a hardware concept by means of specially developed software. In this way, a real system is created from the specification at the push of a button, and delivered customized and ready for connection.