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I am newbie to testing world. I am currently working on automation testing for a python code in the environment of Autonomous Car Company, is Robot Framework suitable for that? else which is the best suited test framework for these conditions?

I am to perform unit, integration, regression and functional testing. IS it possible to perform all of the above kinds in Robot framework only?

Your suggestions and inputs for setting up an automation testing environment for self-driving cars?

Thank You

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  • Yes, I have seen Robot framework been used in the autonomous car industry. But you will need to give us some more information about the environment and kind of tests you expect to run. – Rsf Feb 6 '18 at 8:48
  • @Rsf the test environment is under build, for the drive environment we are using platforms like apollo auto and nvidia. We are also running tests on ROS. What precisely do you want to know about kind of tests, to my knowledge we are performing these kinds - Unit Testing. Integration Testing. Functional Testing. Acceptance Testing. – Rajath c S Feb 7 '18 at 7:32
  • Unit tests are usually not the best fit for RobotFW, it’s better to use the same language and environment as the code you are testing . higher level tests should be fine (we use them in somewhat similar environment) but Robot has its limitations, for example it is not the best fit for tests that require multi party distributed tests – Rsf Feb 7 '18 at 8:02
  • @Rsf Thank you very much for all the valuable inputs. Can i know what exactly is multi party distributed tests? – Rajath c S Feb 8 '18 at 6:40
  • Think of 3 way video conferencing software where you can share your screen during a call, your test need to start the server and then client 1,2 and 3 (multi party). Each client runs on a different machine (distributed). Now you can manage this sequentially (but from where?)- do this, then do that, then check this BUT you can also run it all in parallel from one central control server, the latter allows you to simulate reality much better. Many of the “device as a service” companies don’t support this, they let test your software on one device only – Rsf Feb 8 '18 at 7:23
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Using robot framework isn't particularly going to help you test a project written in python just because its written in python. It will help you organise your tests and make them more maintainable but it will also at some point make things more difficult for you.

I'm guessing but i'd imagine you might want to test code by calling it directly in python so using unittest2 classes or similar would be fine. This would be less easy in robot and you might need to build a launcher to do this.

If you want to run commands and check the output then robot is great at that but you are likely to need some help from the developers to make stubs.

In the absence of much more info about the scale of the project or what you are testing i would suggest unittest2 test classes as they are the most flexible and extensible approach , as long as you avoid putting asserts in any libraries you build.

With a vehicle i would imagine you have a lot of subsystems connected via a bus (do they still use CAN bus ?) which would be something that might be a little to complex for robot , but you could still execute the same test content as long as you have the appropriate test runners and good testcase classes.

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  • Thank you for the information. I'd like to ask you : can we as well perform integration, regression and system level testing using unittest2 classes..??? Since continuous integration using Jenkins is a part of project - would robot framework be helpful? The issue is - I want to perform all kinds of required testing using single framework (whether built in or external). Could you pls explain on - "needing help from developers for stubs".. – Rajath c S Feb 7 '18 at 7:52
  • The scale of the project is huge. Need to test components of the vehicle system. Yes, CAN bus is being utilized. Implementing Autosar is major a part. So, do you mean to summarize that building good test runners and testcase classes are not easy in using robot framework? – Rajath c S Feb 7 '18 at 8:00
  • Robot framework provides the runners and its own test case , it's not likely to cover what you want so using a simpler testcase class will give youore flexibility. You can use them for any type of testing – Amias Feb 7 '18 at 21:27

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