Combinatorial Testing of Context Aware Android Applications

Abstract

Mobile devices such as smart phones and smart watches utilize apps that run in context aware environments and must respond to context changes such as changes in network connectivity, battery level, screen orientation, and more. The large number of GUI events and context events often complicate the testing process. This work expands the AutoDroid tool to automatically generate tests that are guided by PairwiseInter-leaved coverage of GUI event and context event sequences. We systematically weave context and GUI events into testing using the pairwise interleaved algorithm. The results show that the pairwise interleaved algorithm achieves up to five times higher code coverage compared to a technique that generates test suites in a single predefined context (without interleaving context and GUI events), a technique that changes the context at the beginning of each test case (without interleaving context and GUI events), and Monkey-Context-GUI (which randomly chooses context and GUI events). Future work will expand this strategy to include more context variables and test emerging technologies such as IoT and autonomous vehicles.