Distributed Synthetic Sensors Across Vehicle ECUs
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Solution Overview
Problem
Modern vehicles face challenges in efficiently sharing sensor data across different electronic control units (ECUs) due to varying communication interfaces and certification requirements, leading to siloed computing capacities and data inputs, which hinders the deployment of new synthetic sensors and limits the flexibility of existing systems.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of an in-vehicle distributed computing environment allows for the deployment of synthetic sensors as modular components across multiple ECUs, enabling seamless data flow and resource sharing, with a synthetic sensor service that configures and orchestrates these sensors using standardized packages and annotations to overcome hardware and capability limitations.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If sensor data is shared across multiple ECUs, then adaptability and versatility improve, but device complexity increases due to varying communication interfaces and certification requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a gateway ECU as an intermediary component that mediates communication between different ECUs. The gateway ECU receives sensor data from one ECU and redistributes it to other ECUs that require the data, thereby shielding individual ECUs from direct communication interface complexity while enabling broad data sharing across the vehicle system.
Solution Approach 2:
The gateway ECU serves multiple functions: it acts as a data router, a communication protocol translator, and a certification compliance manager. By consolidating these diverse functions into a single multi-functional component, the system enables sensor data sharing across ECUs with different interfaces without requiring each ECU to handle multiple communication protocols directly.
2Manufacturing precision
If ECUs are specialized with different capabilities, then manufacturing precision improves, but loss of information increases due to siloed computing capacities
Solution Approach 1:
The gateway ECU serves as an information intermediary that collects sensor data from ECUs with specialized access and redistributes it to other ECUs that need the information. This ensures that even though individual ECUs remain specialized and may not directly access all sensor inputs, the necessary information flows to where it is needed through the gateway's mediation.
3Adaptability or versatility
If synthetic sensors are deployed across multiple ECUs, then adaptability improves, but device complexity increases due to modular component coordination
Solution Approach 1:
The gateway ECU acts as an orchestrator for modular synthetic sensor components distributed across multiple ECUs. It coordinates the interactions between these modular components, managing data flow and synchronization, thereby enabling flexible synthetic sensor deployment while shielding developers from the complexity of coordinating distributed modular components across the network.
Data Source
AI summary
A system comprising one or more computers implements a synthetic sensor service configured to deploy synthetic sensors to in-vehicle computing devices implementing an in-vehicle distributed computing environment. A synthetic sensor may be placed monolithically at a single computing device (e.g. ECU) in the vehicle, or may be modularly placed on multiple computing devices (e.g. multiple ECUs) of the vehicle that each have resources or inputs that the synthetic sensor requires. The modular components of the synthetic sensor may execute in a runtime environment of the in-vehicle distributed computing environment, such that the modular components function as a unified synthetic sensor even though they are placed on different computing devices of the vehicle (e.g. different ECUs).