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Eurostars call 12 September: Spanish SME long experienced in transport ticketing systems searches an SME with expertise in testing complex software systems and modern software development technologies

Summary

Closed for EoI
Profile Type
  • Research & Development Request
POD Reference
RDRES20240801001
Term of Validity
1 August 2024 - 1 August 2025
Company's Country
  • Spain
Type of partnership
  • Research and development cooperation agreement
Targeted Countries
  • All countries
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General information

Short Summary
A Spanish SME long experienced in transport ticketing systems leads a Eurostars proposal for the call with deadline on 12 September. The project is aimed at developing the elements (hardware, software, protocols) required to automate the testing process of ticketing systems by enabling the test plan execution without human intervention thus reducing the overall implementation cost. They search an SME capable of testing complex software systems and modern software development technologies.
Full Description
When modifications made in the equipment used in ticketing systems needs to be (re)certified, testing the system involves a lot of human intervention performing repetitive activities such as displaying menus, loading testing parameters, or approaching cards to a card reader. This human involvement increases considerably the cost of the ticketing system implementation.

This project aims at developing the elements (hardware, software, protocols) required to automate the testing process of ticketing systems by enabling the test plan execution without human intervention thus reducing considerably the overall implementation cost.

The development and implementation of a ticketing system (in particular in the case of large transport systems) requires a substantial effort in the testing and certification of the complete system which must be tested in different circumstances including changes in stations, configurations, intelligent cards used and the different options offered to users to interact with the system. The system test plans contain hundreds to thousands tests, every test requiring before its execution the manual adjustment of a substantial amount of parameters as the ones mentioned above. The adjustment of most parameters demands manual human intervention making the certification of the ticketing system very costly. Moreover, the need to recertify the system when unavoidable software modifications are implemented, requires the test plan to be executed multiple times for every implementation increasing even further the testing cost.

The goal of this project is to drastically reduce the amount of human labour needed to test ticketing systems, especially in intricate setups like railway transport systems and other large-scale, complex implementations. To achieve this goal the project will carry out the following activities:
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- Specification of the whole automatic testing system with identification of the elements requiring human intervention that must be replaced by an implementation which can be operated autonomously. The elements identified will be software modules but also hardware elements capable to simulate some human operations such as the approach and removal of a card to/from a card reader.
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- Specification of a standard protocol to interact with the ticketing equipment provided by different manufacturers.
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- Development and implementation of the basic building blocks of the automatic testing system in particular: the software test framework to be deployed in a central server to control the full process automation; the emulator equipment for specific manual human operations such as the reload of the configuration to the card under test, the approach and removal of the card to/from the card readers and other human interactions demanded by the ticketing system.
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- Proof of concept of the whole approach by deploying the test system developed in a representative installation including the evaluation of the key performance indicators of the technical and business advantages obtained.
Advantages and Innovations
The innovation pursued in this project will provide the following advantages:

­- Drastic reduction in the testing and certification cost of ticketing systems by the availability of fully automated testing setups enabling test execution without human intervention.

- Substantial increase in the reliability of ticketing system allowing the execution of complete test plans with every software modification removing the need to oversimplify the test process in recertifications to keep the cost under control.
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- Deployment at large scale of the automatic testing approach proposed by promoting the standardization of the protocol used to implement the automatic testing in third-party ticketing equipment.
Sustainable Development Goals
  • Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
  • Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
  • Goal 17: Partnerships to achieve the Goal

Partner Sought

Expected Role of a Partner
The partner sought is an SME with expertise in complex software development and modern tools used for state-of-the-art software systems featuring “continuous integration/continuous deployment” in particular DevOps tools including automatic testing tools of physically distributed systems. The partner will be in charge to implement the automatic testing harness for the whole system and the control of the testing process from a remote server. All these activities will be performed in cooperation with the consortium partners in particular with the project coordinator who will also be in charge to develop essential hardware and software elements of the system.
Type and Size of Partner
  • SME <=10
  • SME 11-49
  • SME 50 - 249
Type of partnership
  • Research and development cooperation agreement

Call details

Framework program
  • Eureka
Call title and identifier
EUREKA – EUROSTARS 3 – Call 7 September, 12th, 2024
Anticipated project budget
1 million euros
Coordinator required
No
Deadline for EoI
Deadline of the call
Project duration in weeks
156
Web link to the call
https://eurekanetwork.org/programmes/eurostars/
Project title and acronym
Automatic Testing of Automatic Fare Collection Equipment without Human Interaction (ATAHI)

Dissemination

Technology keywords
  • 01004003 - Applications for Transport and Logistics
  • 01004004 - ASP Application Service Providing
Market keywords
  • 02007022 - Software services
  • 02007001 - Systems software
  • 02006004 - Data processing, analysis and input services
  • 02006009 - Other computer services
  • 02007028 - Other software related
Sector Groups Involved
  • Digital
Targeted countries
  • All countries