Autonomous Vehicle Failover With Partial Redundant Reconfiguration
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Solution Overview
Problem
Autonomous vehicles face challenges in seamlessly transitioning to a redundant system upon hardware component failure, as existing failover methods often require full hardware redundancy and may compromise safety and efficiency.
Innovation Solution
A failover system that detects errors in autonomous driving systems, transitions control operations from a primary system to a secondary system with fewer resources, and reconfigures remaining hardware resources into a redundant system, allowing for dynamic redundancy without full hardware duplication.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If full hardware redundancy is implemented for failover, then system reliability is improved, but device complexity and cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements partial redundancy by maintaining a second autonomous driving system with fewer hardware resources than the first system. This partial redundancy is sufficient for failover operations without requiring complete hardware duplication, thereby reducing device complexity while maintaining adequate system reliability for safety-critical functions.
Solution Approach 2:
The autonomous driving system is segmented into multiple independent systems (first and second autonomous driving systems) with different hardware resource allocations. This segmentation allows the vehicle to operate with a primary system and transition to a secondary system with reduced resources, avoiding the need for full redundancy of all hardware components.
2Reliability
If full hardware redundancy is implemented for failover, then system reliability is improved, but cost increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements partial redundancy by maintaining a second autonomous driving system with fewer hardware resources than the first system. This partial redundancy is sufficient for failover operations without requiring complete hardware duplication, thereby reducing device complexity and cost while maintaining adequate system reliability for safety-critical functions.
3Device complexity
If failover to a system with fewer resources is performed, then device complexity is reduced, but productivity and performance may deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically adapts its configuration by transitioning between a first autonomous driving system with full resources and a second autonomous driving system with reduced resources. This dynamic reconfiguration allows the vehicle to optimize performance when the primary system is operational while maintaining operational capability through the secondary system, balancing productivity and device complexity based on system state.
Data Source
AI summary
A failover system for autonomous vehicles, including: detecting an error associated with a hardware resource of a first autonomous driving system of the autonomous vehicle; performing a failover from the first autonomous driving system to a second autonomous driving system comprising fewer hardware resources relative to the first autonomous driving system, wherein performing the failover causes control operations generated by the second autonomous driving system to be applied to the autonomous vehicle instead of control operations generated by the first autonomous driving system; and reconfigure one or more other hardware resources of the first autonomous driving system not associated with the error into a redundant autonomous driving system.