US 12,253,937 B1
Software tool qualification for safety-critical systems
Parisa Khorsand, Mountain View, CA (US); Kaushik Raghu, San Bruno, CA (US); Selvamraju Somalraju, Mountain View, CA (US); and Yang Song, San Francisco, CA (US)
Assigned to Zoox, Inc., Foster City, CA (US)
Filed by Zoox, Inc., Foster City, CA (US)
Filed on Dec. 1, 2021, as Appl. No. 17/540,053.
Int. Cl. G06F 11/36 (2006.01); G06F 8/71 (2018.01); G06F 11/07 (2006.01); G06F 11/3668 (2025.01)
CPC G06F 11/3688 (2013.01) [G06F 8/71 (2013.01); G06F 11/0772 (2013.01); G06F 11/3692 (2013.01); G06F 11/3696 (2013.01)] 18 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method comprising:
receiving, from a user, input data comprising operational data associated with a component of a vehicle;
generating, based at least in part on the input data, an input file written in a data exchange format;
providing the input file as input to a code generating software tool;
performing, by a first qualification tool, a first qualification process based on the input file, wherein the first qualification process is configured to parse the input file and to check the input file for errors;
generating, based on the first qualification process determining that the input file is free of errors and by the code generating software tool, source code comprising instructions to interface with the component, the source code comprising a predetermined part and a dynamic part generated based at least in part on the input file;
performing, by a second qualification tool, a second qualification process on the dynamic part of the source code, wherein the second qualification process is configured to check the dynamic part of the source code for errors introduced by the code generating software tool generating the source code;
performing, by a third qualification tool, a third qualification process on the dynamic part of the source code, wherein the third qualification process is configured to check the dynamic part of the source code for inconsistencies between the input data received from the user and data from additional source code associated with the component;
associating, based at least in part on the second qualification process determining that the dynamic part of the source code is free of errors and at least in part on the third qualification process determining that the input data and data from further source code is consistent, the source code with the additional source code;
providing the source code and the additional source code in the code base to a compiler configured to build software from the files;
transmitting the software to the vehicle; and
performing, during initialization of the software, by a fourth qualification tool comprising a runtime script, a fourth qualification process on the software, wherein the fourth qualification process is configured to check that processes performed by the software that were specified by the source code are operating correctly.