Automotive

The automotive industry has an important role to play in ensuring the safety of the people who drive their vehicles. The software that controls vehicles needs to be developed and tested to the highest possible levels.

Industry standards such as MISRA have been developed to ensure that software is adequately developed and tested. LDRA’s highly advanced suite of tools automatically enable companies to determine whether their software meets these requirements.

LDRA has worked closely with many leading car manufacturers throughout the world to ensure that their systems are adequately tested at the programming level. In addition to working with mainstream automotive manufacturers LDRA has also developed strong ties with the motorsport industry which has traditionally been at the forefront of new automotive technologies.

From 1994 onwards LDRA provided specialist software scrutineering services to the governing body of world motorsport, the FIA (Federation Internationale De l'Automobile). These scrutineering services were applied principally to the F1 World Championship under a brief 'To eliminate cheating in Formula 1'.

The success of the collaboration saw the service later extended to the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) and other championship series worldwide. An Autosport magazine article at the time reported the following - 'Specialist firm LDRA became involved in motorsport software interrogation after electronic driver aids were ruled out of F1 for ‘94. It now fulfils a similar role in the British Touring Car Championship.'...'Before they (LDRA) became involved in the BTCC it was full of traction control controversy. As soon as they came on board, the allegations went away.'

LDRA have utilised this experience at the leading edge of automotive technology to develop specific facilities within the LDRA tool suite which are designed to assist with the testing of complex embedded automotive software control systems.

The benefits of these facilities include the following:

  • Software is thoroughly tested at the source code level ensuring anomalies and/or bugs are not present.
  • Adherence to MISRA C / MISRA-C:2004 is reported.
  • Safety-critical systems are validated and can be released to market.