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Testing-based development of integrated software products – Higher quality and cheaper development with Typhoon HIL
Source: eKapija
Sunday, 27.10.2019.
13:54
Sunday, 27.10.2019.
13:54
Comments
(Demonstration of Typhoon HIL equipment at the 2017 Microgrid & DER Controller Symposium at the MIT)
Software is everywhere. Not only in its obvious forms, such as apps for smartphones, tablets, computers, smart watches and TVs, or internet services. Software has permeated our lives, from house chores to power sockets, the availability of which we take for granted. Software is there in driving aid systems. It is there in air conditioning devices. In advanced washing machine de-staining programs. In phone chargers and batteries, preventing them from overheating and exploding. In showerheads, allowing them to change color depending on water temperature. In airplane systems, facilitating pilots’ work and making flying the safest form of transport. Integrated control software is omnipresent.
However, the methods of securing the quality of this kind of software have not fully followed its expansion. Forced landings of new airplane models, emergency upgrades of software controlling the gas pedal, withdrawing flagship smartphone models or 10,000 electric scooters... These are just some of the examples that have been made publicly known, whereas hundreds of thousands of small software bugs are now considered part of everyday life, easily solved by restarting the device.
There is, however, a field where the quality of control software is critical to the functioning of the whole society and the economy, and where the cost of restarting a system in order to remove a software malfunction is measured in millions: energy. A drastic increase in the number of software-controlled devices in the energy system and an upgrade of the distribution network for the purposes of the electrification of road transport usually pass unnoticed by the public, despite the fact that constant power supply is one of the foundations of the modern way of life. This raises the quality requirements for the software controlling all these systems to a unique level.
The company Typhoon HIL Inc, whose research and development center is located in Serbia, has created the best solution for the development of new software-controlled devices and systems in the field of energy electronics, regardless of whether they are made to work independently from the distribution network or connected to it. Using these solutions, the control software can automatically be tested in all phases of development, from the prototype to software upgrade in the existing devices. Also, these solutions address all the key challenges that high-tech companies meet: productivity, safety, lack of qualified workforce and the special characteristics of internal development processes.
Control software consists of tens of thousands of lines of code developed by programmers from one or more, sometimes geographically remote, teams. This kind of complexity requires detailed testing. Paradoxically, the number of engineers in software development is often up to five times higher than the number of engineers doing quality control and testing.
(Typhoon HIL Microgrid Testbed, a fully vertically integrated solution for the testing-based development of control software)
Because of this, teams which carry out software quality control and testing are expected to be remarkably productive. The solutions provided by Typhoon HIL respond to this challenge by enabling a full automation of testing, along with an automatic generation of reports. This way, testing engineers can secure the sending of feedback to the development team regarding the quality of the freshly coded control software in the fastest way possible. This creates a perpetual feedback look between the development team and the quality control team, which enables even the smallest software iterations to be tested for thousands of potential scenarios, allowing for each error to be detected almost immediately.
Vertical integration also increases the productivity: all software and hardware is produced by Typhoon HIL, so the testing can begin right away, without a long period of integration and setting up of various elements of the testing environment from various producers. Thanks to this, the leading global producers, Schneider Electric, ABB, Woodward, AVL and hundreds of others, use Typhoon HIL solutions for development and pre-certification of solar transformers, power storage systems, electric motor control systems, micronetwork management systems etc.
Regardless of whether the software is being developed for a 3-kW transformer, a 300-kW electric car drivetrain system, a 1-MW electric car charger or a 5-MW micronetwork controller, Typhoon HIL enables the testing of control software without any risk and without the need to use expensive laboratory elements. HIL emulators, with their temporal increments of 50 ns, emulate the energy part of the device (for example, IGBT transistors, electric motors, battery cells etc.), whereas the control software is connected directly to the emulator. As the control software doesn’t “know” that it is fact running an emulated energy system, engineers can test it directly, without risks such as short-circuiting, destroyed prototypes, or even explosions, which are inevitable in traditional testing.
In addition to increased productivity and inherent safety, this solution also sidesteps the problem of the lack of qualified labor force, as the existing engineers can do three or four times more testing in the same amount of time. Finally, since the automation of testing is based on the currently most popular programming language, Python, each team can adapt the testing to its processes with only a few additional automation code lines.
This way, the testing-based development inevitably increases software quality, while also making the development less expensive through increasing the productivity and early error detection. Typhoon HIL and the users of its equipment thereby give a palpable contribution to the development of new, transaction energy network, as well as digitization, decarbonization, and decentralization of electrical energy.
Software is everywhere. Not only in its obvious forms, such as apps for smartphones, tablets, computers, smart watches and TVs, or internet services. Software has permeated our lives, from house chores to power sockets, the availability of which we take for granted. Software is there in driving aid systems. It is there in air conditioning devices. In advanced washing machine de-staining programs. In phone chargers and batteries, preventing them from overheating and exploding. In showerheads, allowing them to change color depending on water temperature. In airplane systems, facilitating pilots’ work and making flying the safest form of transport. Integrated control software is omnipresent.
However, the methods of securing the quality of this kind of software have not fully followed its expansion. Forced landings of new airplane models, emergency upgrades of software controlling the gas pedal, withdrawing flagship smartphone models or 10,000 electric scooters... These are just some of the examples that have been made publicly known, whereas hundreds of thousands of small software bugs are now considered part of everyday life, easily solved by restarting the device.
There is, however, a field where the quality of control software is critical to the functioning of the whole society and the economy, and where the cost of restarting a system in order to remove a software malfunction is measured in millions: energy. A drastic increase in the number of software-controlled devices in the energy system and an upgrade of the distribution network for the purposes of the electrification of road transport usually pass unnoticed by the public, despite the fact that constant power supply is one of the foundations of the modern way of life. This raises the quality requirements for the software controlling all these systems to a unique level.
The company Typhoon HIL Inc, whose research and development center is located in Serbia, has created the best solution for the development of new software-controlled devices and systems in the field of energy electronics, regardless of whether they are made to work independently from the distribution network or connected to it. Using these solutions, the control software can automatically be tested in all phases of development, from the prototype to software upgrade in the existing devices. Also, these solutions address all the key challenges that high-tech companies meet: productivity, safety, lack of qualified workforce and the special characteristics of internal development processes.
Control software consists of tens of thousands of lines of code developed by programmers from one or more, sometimes geographically remote, teams. This kind of complexity requires detailed testing. Paradoxically, the number of engineers in software development is often up to five times higher than the number of engineers doing quality control and testing.
(Typhoon HIL Microgrid Testbed, a fully vertically integrated solution for the testing-based development of control software)
Because of this, teams which carry out software quality control and testing are expected to be remarkably productive. The solutions provided by Typhoon HIL respond to this challenge by enabling a full automation of testing, along with an automatic generation of reports. This way, testing engineers can secure the sending of feedback to the development team regarding the quality of the freshly coded control software in the fastest way possible. This creates a perpetual feedback look between the development team and the quality control team, which enables even the smallest software iterations to be tested for thousands of potential scenarios, allowing for each error to be detected almost immediately.
Vertical integration also increases the productivity: all software and hardware is produced by Typhoon HIL, so the testing can begin right away, without a long period of integration and setting up of various elements of the testing environment from various producers. Thanks to this, the leading global producers, Schneider Electric, ABB, Woodward, AVL and hundreds of others, use Typhoon HIL solutions for development and pre-certification of solar transformers, power storage systems, electric motor control systems, micronetwork management systems etc.
Regardless of whether the software is being developed for a 3-kW transformer, a 300-kW electric car drivetrain system, a 1-MW electric car charger or a 5-MW micronetwork controller, Typhoon HIL enables the testing of control software without any risk and without the need to use expensive laboratory elements. HIL emulators, with their temporal increments of 50 ns, emulate the energy part of the device (for example, IGBT transistors, electric motors, battery cells etc.), whereas the control software is connected directly to the emulator. As the control software doesn’t “know” that it is fact running an emulated energy system, engineers can test it directly, without risks such as short-circuiting, destroyed prototypes, or even explosions, which are inevitable in traditional testing.
In addition to increased productivity and inherent safety, this solution also sidesteps the problem of the lack of qualified labor force, as the existing engineers can do three or four times more testing in the same amount of time. Finally, since the automation of testing is based on the currently most popular programming language, Python, each team can adapt the testing to its processes with only a few additional automation code lines.
This way, the testing-based development inevitably increases software quality, while also making the development less expensive through increasing the productivity and early error detection. Typhoon HIL and the users of its equipment thereby give a palpable contribution to the development of new, transaction energy network, as well as digitization, decarbonization, and decentralization of electrical energy.
Companies:
Tajfun HIL d.o.o. Novi Sad
Schneider Electric Srbija d.o.o. Beograd
ABB d.o.o. Beograd
AVL projekt INT Novi Sad
Tags:
Typhoon HIL
Typhoon HIL Inc
Typhoon HIL Microgrid Testbed
Woordward
software control
software security
cyber security
web security
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