Fleet Scheduling Controller for Autonomous Vehicle Deployment
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current systems lack an efficient method to coordinate and deploy autonomous vehicles based on their state of health and operator requirements, leading to suboptimal utilization and potential maintenance delays.
Innovation Solution
A scheduling controller system that communicates with autonomous vehicles to determine their state of health and desired usage requirements, creating a usage schedule to deploy vehicles effectively, considering both health and operational needs.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If autonomous vehicles are deployed without coordinated scheduling, then operator wait times increase and fleet efficiency decreases, but implementing a scheduling system increases device complexity
Solution Approach 1:
A remote controller acts as an intermediary between autonomous vehicles and operators, receiving vehicle data (state of health, location, availability) and operator requests, then coordinating deployments optimally. This centralized mediator resolves the complexity by consolidating scheduling logic in one system rather than requiring complex peer-to-peer coordination among multiple vehicles and operators.
Solution Approach 2:
The scheduling system continuously receives feedback from autonomous vehicles regarding their state of health, location, and availability. This real-time feedback enables dynamic adjustment of deployment schedules, optimizing fleet efficiency while accounting for actual vehicle conditions. The system processes this feedback to determine optimal vehicle assignments that minimize operator wait times while maintaining appropriate maintenance schedules.
2Ease of operation
If vehicles are deployed based solely on operator requests without considering state of health, then operator service is maximized, but vehicle reliability decreases due to potential maintenance delays
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary assessment of vehicle state of health before deploying vehicles to operators. By evaluating vehicle conditions in advance and scheduling maintenance proactively when needed, the system prevents reliability issues from developing during operation. This preliminary action ensures vehicles are assigned to operators only when they meet reliability thresholds, balancing operator service availability with vehicle reliability.
3Loss of time
If comprehensive vehicle monitoring and scheduling is implemented, then fleet efficiency improves and downtime is reduced, but the system requires increased use of energy for data processing and communication
Solution Approach 1:
The remote controller serves multiple functions: it monitors vehicle state of health, tracks location, receives operator requests, coordinates deployments, and schedules maintenance. By consolidating these diverse functions into a single multi-functional system, the patent reduces the total energy consumption that would result from having separate specialized systems for each function. The universal system processes data efficiently by handling multiple tasks within a unified architecture.
Data Source
AI summary
A scheduling controller in communication with a plurality of autonomous vehicles is described, and includes an operator request compiler, a fleet state-of-health database, an environmental conditions compiler and a fleet scheduling controller. The fleet scheduling controller is configured to deploy the autonomous vehicles based upon inputs from the operator request compiler, the fleet state-of-health database and the environmental conditions compiler. A process for coordinating a fleet of autonomous vehicles includes determining states of health for the autonomous vehicles, and determining a desired autonomous vehicle use requirement from each of a plurality of operators that are associated with the autonomous vehicles. A usage schedule for each of the autonomous vehicles is determined based upon the states of health and the desired autonomous vehicle use requirements from the operators. The autonomous vehicles are deployed based upon the usage schedule.