Distributed Vehicle Coordination for Disaster Resilience
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Solution Overview
Problem
Remote server-based vehicle coordination systems are susceptible to disruptions during natural disasters, leading to cessation of delivery efforts when the server or communication network is impacted.
Innovation Solution
Vehicles coordinate their movements by communicating location and route information within groups, allowing them to determine which vehicle should make a delivery, thereby shifting coordination efforts from a centralized remote server to a distributed task among vehicles.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If a remote server coordinates vehicle routes, then delivery efficiency is improved and duplicate efforts are avoided, but system reliability deteriorates when the server or communication network is impacted by natural disasters
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the centralized coordination function into distributed segments across multiple vehicles. Each vehicle independently performs route coordination tasks with nearby vehicles, eliminating the single-point failure vulnerability of centralized server-based systems while maintaining efficient delivery operations.
Solution Approach 2:
Vehicles autonomously perform route coordination and destination assignment without requiring continuous remote server intervention. Each vehicle determines its own route and coordinates with peer vehicles, enabling the system to maintain operational reliability even when communication infrastructure is disrupted.
2Reliability
If vehicles communicate location and route information within groups, then coordination resiliency is improved, but communication requirements and system complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The vehicle fleet is segmented into proximity-based groups that communicate locally rather than requiring global communication infrastructure. This segmentation reduces communication complexity while improving resiliency, as each group can operate independently using only local peer-to-peer communication.
3Extent of automation
If vehicles determine delivery assignments independently based on location and route data, then system autonomy is improved, but computational load on individual vehicles increases
Solution Approach 1:
Each vehicle performs partial coordination computations only for its local proximity group rather than calculating global route assignments. This partial action approach maintains high system autonomy while significantly reducing the computational energy burden on individual vehicle systems.
Data Source
AI summary
A delivery system in which the vehicles themselves coordinate their movements. Vehicles are assigned to groups based on proximity. Each vehicle communicates its location and route information to the other vehicles in the group. The vehicles in the group then know the positions and routes of the other vehicles in the group. When a delivery is requested, the vehicles in the group use this information to determine which vehicle should be assigned to make that delivery. As the vehicles move around, their proximity to each other changes. When a vehicle has moved away from a group, that vehicle may be removed from the group and assigned to a different group. In this manner, the vehicle coordination mechanism is a distributed task performed by all the vehicles.