Too complex for humans: only with A.I. and bot technology is the next step into the automotive future
Cognizant Mobility showcases xRPA technology at Automotive Testing Expo.
The car of the future threatens to fail due to the complexity of the software
It has been clear for years that the future belongs to the software-defined vehicle. The focus is on customer features and functions that are controlled exclusively by software - modular, high-performance and loaded onto the vehicle over-the-air. Hundreds of millions of lines of software code will ensure both driving experience and safety in our future cars. The value of a vehicle and also the assessment of the vehicle manufacturer will depend almost exclusively on the quality of the software, its development and maintenance. And it is precisely this increasing software complexity that is causing headaches for manufacturers, because software errors are already responsible for half of all vehicle recalls (Automotive Defect and Recall Report, Stout Risius Ross, 2020). According to a study by Deloitte, software testing already consumes 40 percent of all development costs.
With A.I. and bots out of the complexity and cost trap
The increasing software complexity cannot be controlled with conventional methods. The good news is that there is a way out that can largely overcome the limitations of manual, human processes: xRPA (Extended Robot Process Automation). This abbreviation hides an autonomously running Industry 4.0 platform whose heart is a bot. Enriched with artificial intelligence and a lot of process know-how, this bot is able to test complex software in connection with the electronic hardware completely autonomously. Customers do not have to change their previous testing processes from scratch, rather the bot orchestrates existing tools and thus replaces the manual work of the test engineer 24/7. The bot creates new test orders, autonomously selects the correct configuration of the hardware, selects the test benches, starts and monitors the test execution and then evaluates the test results and shows possible causes for errors and recognized patterns.
Save time and money
The results in the first customer projects are quite impressive. The experts at Cognizant Mobility were able to increase the already ambitious utilization of the test benches of an OEM customer from 70% to over 95% with the xRPA approach. For the first time, the customer can fall back on a 24/7 test operation with simultaneous cost savings of approx. 30% in the process chain. The test engineers' time that was now free was then used for an even more precise data analysis, which, according to initial estimates, was able to increase the quality of the validation by at least 20%.
The optimization of the testing process chain along the most important key figures such as utilization rate or validation quality is a prerequisite for the software-defined future of the vehicle and for getting the complexity problem under control.
xRPA - experience the bot live at the Automotive Testing Expo 2022 in Stuttgart
From June 21 to 23, 2022, trade visitors can visit Hall 8, booth no. 8238 at the Automotive Testing Expo in Stuttgart. Visiting the fair is free. With a hardware structure, vehicle headlights and electric motors, Cognizant Mobility shows how the xRPA bot takes over the testing completely autonomously and thus supports the test engineer.