Conventional approaches for the validation of robotic systems include simulations and functional software testing. Although these approaches are interesting, they do not offer coverage information to guide the testing activity. In this sense, the introduction of coverage testing to the validation of mobile robotic systems seems to promise. This paper proposes a integration testing approach for robotic systems in a simulation environment. The approach is composed of test scenarios, constructed based on functional testing, and structural testing towards revealing defects and providing a better systematization of the testing activity in this application domain. The proposed approach focuses on systems developed in ROS, the robot operating system, in which communication can be established through a publish/subscribe interaction schema. The paper provides an example of the way the integration testing approach can be applied to robotic systems. An experimental study conducted with developers of mobile robotic systems evaluated the gains and proved the applicability of the approach to the industry. The results confirmed its advantages for the integration testing of mobile robotic systems. It can check functional behavior (test scenarios), or reach a high structural coverage (coverage criteria), and reveal common defects in mobile robotic systems.

中文翻译：

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机器人系统的集成测试

机器人系统验证的常规方法包括模拟和功能软件测试。尽管这些方法很有趣，但它们不提供覆盖信息来指导测试活动。从这个意义上说，将覆盖测试引入到移动机器人系统的验证中似乎很有希望。本文提出了一种在仿真环境中对机器人系统进行集成测试的方法。该方法由基于功能测试构建的测试场景和结构测试组成，旨在揭示缺陷并在此应用领域中提供更好的测试活动系统化。所提出的方法侧重于在机器人操作系统 ROS 中开发的系统，其中可以通过发布/订阅交互模式建立通信。本文提供了一个示例，说明了集成测试方法可以应用于机器人系统的方式。与移动机器人系统开发人员进行的一项实验研究评估了收益并证明了该方法在行业中的适用性。结果证实了其在移动机器人系统集成测试中的优势。它可以检查功能行为（测试场景），或达到高结构覆盖（覆盖标准），并揭示移动机器人系统中的常见缺陷。