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Engine management systems in modern motor vehicles are becoming increasingly extensive and complex. The functionality of the control units which are the central components of such systems is determined by the hardware and software. They are the result of a lengthy development and production process. Road testing of control units, together with testing them on the engine test bench, is very time consuming and costly. An alternative is to test control units away from their actual environment, in a virtual context. This involves operating the control unit on a Hardware-in-the-Loop test bench. The control unit's large number of individual and interlinked functions necessitates a structured, reproducible test procedure. These tests can, however, only be conducted once an engine prototype has been completed, as the parameters for the existing conventional models are determined from the data measured on the test bench.

Electronic control units of engines have an ever-increasing complexity and more and more software functions need to get calibrated. Today it is possible to automate virtually every test procedure needed for these calibration tasks. But with currently available systems the effort required to set up automatic procedures often outweighs the advantages even if a commercial toolbox is readily available. The goal of this paper is to show a new concept for a calibration system that allows for creation and modification of test sequences with relatively little knowledge and reuse of test procedure components. Included is a language that features special commands and integrated knowledge for engine test bed applications. Flexible handling of exception situations, reusability of test procedure components and extensibility of the language will be discussed. The implementation of a typical test procedure will be shown.