Evolutional development of controlling software for agricultural vehicles and robots

Agricultural vehicles and robots expand their controlling software in size and complexity for their increasing functions. Due to repeated, ad hoc addition and modification, software gets structurally corrupted and becomes low performing, resource consuming and unreliable. This paper presents an evolutional development process combining Software Product Line (SPL) and eXtreme Derivation Development Process (XDDP).

While SPL is a promising paradigm for successful reuse of software artefacts, it requires understanding of the whole system, a global and future view of the system, and preparation of well managed core assets. By contrast, while XDDP is a less burden process which focuses only on the portion to be changed in the new system, it never prevents software structure from corrupting due to absence of the global view of the system.

The paper describes an adoption process for SPL, with an example of the autonomous tractor, that applies XDDP initially for addition and modification of functions, accumulates core assets and cultivates a global view of the system through iterated development with XDDP, and finally shifts to SPL development.