Autonomous Vehicle Roadside Assistance With Validated Remote Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Autonomous vehicles often require human intervention when they cannot make progress towards their destination due to issues like obstacles, software or hardware problems, or passenger requests, but they lack a driver to take control or address the assistance needs.
Innovation Solution
A method is implemented where server computing devices assign a technician to assist the vehicle, providing information and instructions to navigate to the vehicle, disengage autonomous driving mode, and control it manually, while ensuring all signals are validated and processed securely to prevent unauthorized commands.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Extent of automation
If autonomous vehicles operate in fully autonomous mode without a human driver, then automation level and operational independence are improved, but the ability to intervene when the vehicle requires assistance deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
A remote computing device serves as an intermediary between the autonomous vehicle and human operators. When the vehicle requires assistance, the remote computing device establishes a communication channel that allows human operators to intervene remotely, thus maintaining automation while providing a fallback human intervention mechanism.
2Ease of operation
If the vehicle requires roadside assistance, then operational support is improved, but communication security and authorization verification become more complex
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-establishing authorization credentials and validation protocols before assistance is needed. The remote computing device is pre-configured with the ability to validate signals and communicate with the vehicle, so when assistance is required, the complex validation process is already in place and can be executed efficiently.
3Speed
If signals from remote devices are processed directly by the vehicle, then response time is improved, but system security and authorization validation deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The server computing device acts as an intermediary that receives signals from the remote computing device, validates their authorization, and then processes legitimate signals for execution by the autonomous vehicle. This intermediary layer ensures security and authorization validation while maintaining relatively fast response times through efficient validation protocols.
Data Source
AI summary
Aspects of the disclosure relate to enabling roadside assistance to a vehicle that requires assistance having an autonomous driving mode. For instance, a technician may be assigned to the vehicle that requires assistance. A signal corresponding to user input at a remote computing device requesting a change to a state of the vehicle may be received. The signal may be based on details of the assigned technician. Based on the validation, an instruction may be sent to the vehicle to change the state of the vehicle.