Vehicle Data Safety Observer for Safety Envelope Integrity
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing vehicle safety systems fail to ensure a minimum safe condition during system failures, particularly in high-risk scenarios, as fail-safe and fail-silent strategies are inadequate for maintaining operational functionality and safety integrity levels like ASIL-D.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a data safety observer system with a data safety unit that intercepts parameter data, performs integrity checks, and modifies data to maintain a vehicle safety envelope, ensuring safe operation even in the presence of hardware and software faults.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If fail-safe or fail-silent strategies are implemented, then system complexity is reduced, but safety integrity and operational functionality are insufficient during failures
Solution Approach 1:
A data safety observer system is introduced as an intermediary component between the vehicle control system and the environment. This observer continuously monitors parameter data, performs integrity checks, and detects faults without requiring complex redundant control architectures. The observer acts as a mediator that enhances safety integrity by filtering and validating data streams, thereby resolving the contradiction between maintaining high reliability and avoiding excessive system complexity.
2Reliability
If redundancy of components and systems is increased, then safety integrity level is improved, but device complexity and cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces physical hardware redundancy with a virtual/software-based data safety observer system. Instead of duplicating physical components (sensors, actuators, control units), the solution uses software-based monitoring, validation, and fault detection mechanisms that operate on existing data streams. This substitution achieves high safety integrity levels (including ASIL-D) without the complexity and cost of physical redundancy.
Solution Approach 2:
The data safety observer system changes the approach from physical redundancy to parameter-based validation. It monitors and validates parameter data (sensor readings, control signals, system states) through integrity checks and plausibility assessments. By focusing on parameter validation rather than component duplication, the system achieves high reliability without increasing device complexity.
3Difficulty of detecting and measuring
If integrity checks and data validation are performed, then fault detection capability is improved, but processing time and computational load increase
Solution Approach 1:
The data safety observer system performs preliminary integrity checks and validation on parameter data before the data is used for control decisions. By pre-validating data streams and detecting faults early in the processing chain, the system enhances fault detection capability without adding significant processing delays to critical control loops. The observer operates continuously in the background, preparing validation results in advance.
Solution Approach 2:
The integrity check mechanism operates continuously and asynchronously with the main control loops. The data safety observer continuously monitors parameter data streams, performs validation checks, and maintains fault detection capability without interrupting or significantly delaying the primary control functions. This continuous operation ensures that fault detection is always active while minimizing impact on real-time control performance.
Data Source
AI summary
A data safety observer system is described. In one or more implementations, a method includes executing at least one application that generates parameter data to cause a vehicle operation performed by at least one vehicle subsystem coupled to a vehicle network, conducting an integrity check on the parameter data that verifies whether the parameter data will cause the vehicle operation to maintain a safety envelope around the vehicle, responsive to determining that the parameter data does not satisfy the integrity check by verifying that the parameter data will not cause the vehicle operation to maintain the safety envelope around the vehicle, modifying the parameter data such that the vehicle safety envelope is maintained during performance of the vehicle operation, and outputting the modified parameter data on the vehicle network for causing the vehicle subsystem to perform the vehicle operation in a way that maintains the vehicle safety envelope.