Exploratory Testing for Safety-Critical Large-Scale Embedded Systems Such as Spacecrafts

Exploratory testing (ET) has been introduced in the academic world as an agile testing methodology. It has so far been considered in the context of several types of software systems, but there is a lack of scientific foundation, when ET is applied to safety-critical large-scale embedded systems. We show that safety-critical large-scale embedded systems possess properties that are quite different to pure software systems - with regard to among others the user interface, involved hardware, environmental influences and the role of software safety standards. ET relies on the notion of tours. Some of the existing tours are described and their relevance for safety-critical large-scale embedded systems is discussed. The main contribution of this paper is the theoretical preparation of empirical work on ET tours applied to safety-critical large-scale embedded systems. Throughout this paper spacecrafts serve as the example of choice.