Enabling Automotive OEMs Validate Vehicle Infotainment Systems

Modern in-vehicle infotainment systems connect with smart automotive technologies like ADAS systems, V2X connectivity solutions, telematics devices, smartphones, sensors etc., and integrate them with each other to provide a great driving experience. A typical high-end infotainment integrated system contains several thousands of features and the exponential combinatorial sequences that these features throw up along with the regional differences, multilanguages, 3rd party software etc, make it difficult for OEMs to validate vehicle infotainment systems and in turn ensure reliability.

Customer Challenges

For automakers, Tier-1s and OEMs, infotainment systems and their reliability remain one of the major concerns. A survey by Consumer Reports states that infotainment systems are one of the major factors that adversely affect reliability results of a brand or a new car model. It also states that vehicles that are in the first year after a significant redesign, continue to see higher incidences of things going wrong, particularly if there are notable changes in infotainment systems, which acts a drag on their reliability scores.

One of the reasons for the high frequency of infotainment issues is sub-optimal validation. Often Tier-1s and OEMs lack the expertise and resources to perform a comprehensive system validation before releasing to the market after Vehicle QA. Complex systems and inadequate testing to cover all scenarios also lead to critical infotainment reliability issues.

QuEST Solution

To solve this challenge, QuEST provides a comprehensive validation solution that enables OEMs and Tier-1s validate their complex infotainment systems so that they can go-to-market faster with a fully qualified version. Customers usually face a fundamental problem of having to deal with exponential system-level validation processes that a complex infotainment system (digital cluster, central and passenger displays) poses.

The comprehensive solution from QuEST leverages detailed metric-driven estimation models, optimization and test design methodologies based on ISO standards to validate all the required test scenarios and release a quality product.

QuEST also offers several standardized approaches such as graphics conformance testing along with innovative approaches to measure performance of user operations at a system level in addition to automation tools such as VRAssist and Phoenix.

QuEST standardizes procedures for bug prioritization based on domain expertise and exposure to diverse OEM products such as usability and system impact. QuEST also helps OEMs standardize procedures for engineering and Vehicle QA divisions.

QuEST experts also develop tool chains that provide necessary traceability with standard defect templates, dynamic dashboards with maximum transparency for monitoring and control. This helps customers to manage the flexibility required during the SOP phase of production.

As part of the process, the QuEST team works to improve the workflows continuously with new lockstep strategies such as pre-validation testing, collaborative testing and innovative KPIs to measure scrap percentage.

Enabling OEMs scale faster across segments

Automotive software verification and validation is evolving to meet the changing customer expectations, demand for faster time to market, and pressure to reduce R&D costs. It will continue to remain critical for other sub domains (like ADAS, EV) as system complexity evolves. QuEST, with its expertise in HMI, platform and validation across infotainment and ADAS segments plays a key role in enabling OEMs and Tier-1s scale and reduce reliability issues significantly.