Automatic Test Generation for Space
This addresses the need for automated test generation in space industry software, specifically for ESA's Operational Simulator, but appears incremental as it builds on existing automatic testing approaches.
The paper tackles the problem of manually writing test scripts for C++ simulators in ESA's Ground Segment infrastructure by exploring automatic testing approaches to propose a system that automatically infers tests from existing code, aiming to satisfy the needs of VST, a service provider.
The European Space Agency (ESA) uses an engine to perform tests in the Ground Segment infrastructure, specially the Operational Simulator. This engine uses many different tools to ensure the development of regression testing infrastructure and these tests perform black-box testing to the C++ simulator implementation. VST (VisionSpace Technologies) is one of the companies that provides these services to ESA and they need a tool to infer automatically tests from the existing C++ code, instead of writing manually scripts to perform tests. With this motivation in mind, this paper explores automatic testing approaches and tools in order to propose a system that satisfies VST needs.