Test Harness Development for an Optical Flapping Sensor

Abstract

Within the FLAPsense project an optical sensor is developed to capture the motions of a rotor hub. A reference version of this sensor is implemented in Python within this work. As the main part a Test Harness is developed which examines the sensor in several rotor hub orientations and failure states. For this purpose, test cases are generated from a state transition diagram, derived from the software requirements document, and other test case generation procedures. A model of the sensor assembly is used to generate test data for normal test cases as well as robustness test cases. The Test Harness offers a generic interface to which not only pure software solutions but also integrated sensor systems can be attached, and is thus reusable in subsequent development stages. Moreover, the integration of RTCA DO-178C work products and traceability of requirements are also part of the Test Harness to simplify future certification according to RTCA DO-178C. A data-driven test strategy is utilized, leading to only a few test procedures which need to be implemented but a huge test case repository for extensive testing of the SUT. The set of test cases is applicable to test-driven development because it covers several evolution steps of the sensor. The test cases are documented in a human-readable style using XML as the main documentation format. Afterwards, they are interpreted by the test harness to generate the executable test cases on-demand from the high-level documentations.