Teleoperations Guidance for Driverless Vehicles in Unpredictable Road Events
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Solution Overview
Problem
Driverless vehicles face challenges in navigating unpredictable events, safety concerns, and spontaneous visual cues on roads, such as construction zones or directions from police officers, which can disrupt normal driving procedures and require adaptive maneuvers.
Innovation Solution
A teleoperations system that facilitates interaction between a driverless vehicle and a remotely located system, allowing the vehicle to request guidance and receive instructions to alter its trajectory, avoid, maneuver around, or pass through events by sending communication signals and receiving teleoperations signals that adjust virtual boundaries of its driving corridor.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If driverless vehicles operate autonomously without teleoperations assistance, then productivity and travel efficiency are improved, but reliability and safety deteriorate when encountering unpredictable events
Solution Approach 1:
A teleoperations system acts as an intermediary between the driverless vehicle and human operators. The system includes a teleoperations receiver that receives communication signals from the vehicle and a teleoperations transmitter that sends teleoperations signals back, enabling human assistance when the vehicle encounters unpredictable events while maintaining autonomous operation during normal conditions
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically transitions between autonomous operation and teleoperations-assisted operation based on the vehicle's operational needs. The vehicle controller can request teleoperations assistance when encountering events outside its operational design domain, creating a flexible hybrid operation mode that adapts to changing conditions
2Reliability
If driverless vehicles encounter unpredictable events requiring adaptive maneuvers, then safety and event avoidance are improved, but loss of time increases due to travel disruptions
Solution Approach 1:
The system prepares for potential events by maintaining communication channels with the teleoperations system and having pre-defined response protocols. When events are detected, the vehicle can quickly transition to teleoperations-assisted mode, reducing the time needed to respond to unexpected situations compared to fully autonomous systems that must handle all scenarios independently
3Device complexity
If driverless vehicles rely solely on autonomous systems, then device complexity is reduced, but adaptability to spontaneous visual cues and unpredictable events deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The teleoperations system serves as an intermediary that provides human cognitive capabilities to the autonomous vehicle. Human operators can interpret spontaneous visual cues and unpredictable events that current autonomous systems cannot handle, effectively extending the vehicle's adaptability without requiring complex upgrades to the vehicle's own decision-making systems
Solution Approach 2:
The teleoperations system provides a universal solution that can handle multiple types of unpredictable events through a single communication infrastructure. The same receiver and transmitter hardware can assist with various event types including construction zones, unusual traffic patterns, and environmental conditions, making the system highly versatile
Data Source
AI summary
A method for autonomously operating a driverless vehicle along a path between a first geographic location and a destination may include receiving communication signals from the driverless vehicle. The communication signals may include sensor data from the driverless vehicle and data indicating occurrence of an event associated with the path. The communication signals may also include data indicating that a confidence level associated with the path is less than a threshold confidence level due to the event. The method may also include determining, via a teleoperations system, a level of guidance to provide the driverless vehicle based on data associated with the communication signals, and transmitting teleoperations signals to the driverless vehicle. The teleoperations signals may include guidance to operate the driverless vehicle according to the determined level of guidance, so that a vehicle controller maneuvers the driverless vehicle to avoid, travel around, or pass through the event.