Remote Vehicle Video Validation Using Visual Indicator Feedback
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing remote control systems for vehicles face challenges in ensuring the dependability of remote operation, particularly in detecting malfunctions in sensor data streams such as video streams, which can experience issues like freezing, delay, quality, and jitter.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of a configurable visual indicator and a video sensor that generate a sensor data stream dependent on the state of the visual indicator, allowing for the detection of malfunctions by comparing the selected and observed states of the indicator within the data stream.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a sensor data stream is transmitted from the remotely operated vehicle to the remote driving station, then remote operation capability is enabled, but malfunctions such as freezing, delay, quality degradation, and jitter cannot be detected
Solution Approach 1:
A configurable visual indicator acts as an intermediary element that is captured in the sensor data stream. This indicator serves as a reference object that allows the remote driving station to verify the integrity and real-time status of the video transmission, enabling detection of malfunctions such as freezing or delay without adding substantial data overhead.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback by capturing the visual indicator in the sensor data stream and comparing its observed state with its selected state. This feedback mechanism enables the remote driving station to detect malfunctions in the sensor data stream by identifying discrepancies between the expected and actual states of the visual indicator.
2Reliability
If a configurable visual indicator is added to enable malfunction detection, then reliability of remote operation is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The configurable visual indicator serves multiple functions: it acts as a visual reference for verifying transmission integrity, provides a means to detect malfunctions, and can be configured in different states to indicate various operational conditions. This multi-functionality allows a single element to address multiple reliability concerns without proportionally increasing system complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The visual indicator is captured within the existing sensor data stream, allowing the system to self-verify transmission quality using resources already allocated for video transmission. The indicator leverages the existing video processing infrastructure without requiring separate dedicated communication channels or complex additional hardware.
3Measurement precision
If the remote driving station monitors the state of the visual indicator to detect malfunctions, then malfunction detection capability is improved, but processing time and computational load increase
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of analyzing the entire sensor data stream for malfunction detection, the system focuses specifically on monitoring the state of the configurable visual indicator. This partial action approach extracts only the necessary information (the indicator's state) from the video stream, significantly reducing processing time and computational load while maintaining effective malfunction detection capability.
Data Source
Figure 1
Figure 2A
Figure 2B
AI summary
Apparatus (110), in particular a remotely operated vehicle, comprising a visual indicator (101) and a video sensor (106) arranged to generate sensor data dependent on a state of the indicator, control circuitry (102) configured to select the state of the indicator, to process instructions received in the apparatus from a remote driving station (150), to provide to the remote driving station the sensor data and to at least one of: provide to the remote driving station an indication of the indicator's selected state to enable the remote driving station to detect a malfunction in the sensor data, and obtain an observation of the state of the indicator, based on the sensor data, and determine whether the observation and the selected state of the indicator are consistent, to detect a malfunction in the sensor data.