Sema Show Daily 2018

Not Your Average Road Test, continued from page 32
make sure the vehicle stayed straight
on the road. Electronics in today’s
vehicles now require a great deal
more “testing” to verify operation
parameters. Radars and cameras
have changed the scope of what we
must test. In many cases, sensors and
cameras must be aligned correctly to
the vehicle.
Static testing is done in shop with
targets being placed at specific points
for radar systems in blind spot detection
systems or, in the case of forward
crash warning, target boards
are placed in front of the vehicle to
align cameras with the vehicle. When
a vehicle is stationary, the environment
around the computers and sensors
that could possibly affect them is
not changing.
Once aligned, sensors and cameras
must see correctly and be tested.
Dynamic testing is designed to do
that. When in motion, the environment
and parameters change.
Sensors must be able to work in both
static and dynamic scenarios. The
other factor is that vibration and
shocks can change the parameters,
too. Not testing the system under,
for lack of a better term, “stress,” can
lead to problems later. This is why
codes can be set at any time, and
11SE_18BSSCOCHE1Pre 8/15/18 8:43 AM Page 1
When you have systems such as adaptive cruise control, emergency automatic braking, lane departure and crash avoidance systems, you
have to look up procedures to see what will be required.
knowing when and why the code set
is important information.
Wikipedia defines dynamic testing
(or dynamic analysis) as a term used
in software engineering to describe
the testing of the dynamic behavior
of code. That is, dynamic analysis
refers to the examination of the
physical response from the system
to variables that are not constant and
change with time.
Post-Repair Scan
So now we have to take a look at
a post-repair scan of vehicles. Do
we scan before a road test or after?
Maybe both? We know codes will
be set from the repair process. Many
times, just disconnecting the battery
will set a DTC. During a post-repair
scan, we can remove all DTCs after
we record them and match to the
pre-repair scan.
Continued on page 36
34 SEMA Show Daily | #SEMA2018