Quality Assurance Aspects and Activities in Automotive Model-Based Development

The automotive industry has adopted model-based design methods and is increasingly using automatic code generators to bridge the gap between function specification and software development. The goal is to cope with rising demands, such as the growing number of electronic systems in a vehicle, increasing complexity and shorter time-to-market. At the same time, assuring quality is key. This article deals with quality aspects and measures in a model-based development process with automatic code generation. The importance of modeling guidelines, the role of MISRA standards and activities, tool qualification, and testing methods are briefly described and discussed with regard to their relevance to the establishment of high-quality, efficient and safe model-based development processes.