Vehicle failure diagnosis apparatus and in-vehicle terminal for vehicle failure diagnosis

• US 7,369,925 B2
• Filed: 07/20/2005
• Issued: 05/06/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 08/11/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hitachi Astemo Ltd. (Hitachi, Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Inventors: Morioka, Michio, Nagano, Masami, Minowa, Toshimichi
• Primary Examiner(s): ARTHUR JEANGLAUDE, GERTRUDE
• Application Number:
  US11/184,861
• Publication Number:
  US 20060047382A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,021 Days
• Field of Search: 701/29, 701/30, 701/45, 340/438, 340/439, 702/182, 702/183, 706/20
• US Class Current: 701/29
• CPC Class Codes: G07C 5/008 communicating information to a remotely located station transmission systems for measured values G08C
• CPC Class Codes: G07C 5/0808 Diagnosing performance data testing of vehicles G01M17/00; testing of electrical installation on vehicles G01R31/005
• CPC Class Codes: G07C 5/0816 Indicating performance data, e.g. occurrence of a malfunction
• CPC Class Codes: G07C 5/085 using electronic data carriers

Abstract

In order to estimate failure times of vehicles, the invention provides a vehicle failure diagnosis apparatus which receives records of learned values actually used in the past in vehicle control systems of vehicles as diagnosis targets from in-vehicle terminals via a communication part, estimates failure time of the vehicle control systems by comparing the received records of the learned values and the failure patterns readout from a failure pattern DB, and outputs the estimated failure time to the in-vehicle terminals.

Claims

1. A vehicle failure diagnosis apparatus, comprising:

a storage device for storing failure patterns that are variation processes of learned values until failures of vehicle control systems in time series, the learned values being parameters used for compensation of control in the vehicle control systems to maintain the vehicle control system in an optimum control state;

a communication part;

a record receiving function for receiving records of learned values actually used in the past in the vehicle control systems of vehicles as diagnosis targets from vehicle terminals in the vehicles via the communication part;

a failure time estimating function for estimating future failure time of the vehicle control systems by comparing the received records of the learned values and the failure patterns readout from the storage device, wherein time when the learned value of the received record reaches a predetermined threshold indicating a possibility of a failure of the vehicle control systems is estimated as the future failure time on the basis of a gradient of the learned value of the failure pattern; and

an estimation result output function for supplying the estimated future failure time to the vehicle terminals.

2. The vehicle failure diagnosis apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the storage device stores and sorts the failure patterns by production related information relating to vehicle production of the vehicle control systems, the vehicle failure diagnosis apparatus further comprising a failure pattern selecting function for selecting one of the failure patterns that corresponds to production related information of the vehicle of the diagnosis target from the storage device, and wherein when the failure time estimating function estimates the failure time, the failure time estimating function reads out the one of the failure patterns selected by the failure pattern selecting function from the storage device and carries out estimation by comparing the records of the learned values collected by the learned value collecting function with the one of the failure pattern selected by the failure pattern selecting function.

3. The vehicle failure diagnosis apparatus according to claim 1, wherein

the storage device further stores vehicle usage environmental information based on usage information of the vehicles, and stores and sorts the failure patterns by the vehicle usage environmental information of the vehicles, and

the vehicle failure diagnosis apparatus further comprises:

a usage environment determining function for, when the record receiving function receives usage information of the vehicles together with the records of the learned values, reading usage environmental information of the vehicle as the diagnosis target from the storage device based on usage information, and

a failure pattern selecting function for selecting one of the failure patterns corresponding to the readout usage environmental information from the storage device, and wherein

when estimating failure time by the failure time estimating function, the failure time estimating function reads out one selected by the failure pattern selecting function from the failure patterns in the storage device, and carries out estimation by comparing the one of readout failure patterns and the records of the learned values collected by the learned value collecting function.

4. The vehicle failure diagnosis apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising:

a record collecting function for collecting records of the learned values actually used in the past in the vehicle control systems from communication devices of a plurality of vehicle terminals, respectively;

a failure pattern analyzing function for analyzing the failure patterns based on the collected records of the learned values, and

a failure pattern registering function for recording the analyzed failure patterns on the storage device.

5. The vehicle failure diagnosis apparatus according to claim 4, wherein

the storage device further stores production related information relating to production of the vehicles, and

the vehicle failure diagnosis apparatus further comprises

a production related information identifying function for identifying production related information relating to production of each vehicle concerning the records collected by the record collecting function from the storage device, and

when recording failure patterns, the failure pattern registering function records failure patterns analyzed by the failure pattern analyzing function on the storage device for each of the identified production related information.

6. The vehicle failure diagnosis apparatus according to claim 4, further comprising a usage environment determining function for, when the record receiving function receives usage information of the vehicles together with the records of the learned values,reading usage environmental information of the vehicle as the diagnosis target from the storage device based on usage information,

wherein

when the record collecting function further collects vehicle usage information together with the records of the learned values, the usage environment determining function reads out the usage environmental information of the vehicle as the diagnosis target based on collected usage information from the storage device, and

when recording failure patterns, the failure pattern registering function records failure patterns analyzed by the failure pattern analyzing function on the storage device for each of the readout vehicle usage environmental information.

7. An in-vehicle terminal comprising:

a storage device that stores failure patterns that are variation processes of the learned values until failures of vehicle control systems in time series, the learned values being parameters used for compensation of control in the vehicle control systems to maintain the vehicle control system in an optimum control state, and stores records of the learned values actually used in the past in the vehicle control systems of vehicles as diagnosis targets;

a failure time estimating function for estimating future failure time of the vehicle control system of one of the vehicles that mounts the in-vehicle terminal by comparing the records of the learned values readout from the storage device with the failure patterns readout from the storage device, wherein time when the learned value of the received record reaches a predetermined threshold indicating a possibility of a failure of the vehicle control systems is estimated as the future failure time on the basis of a gradient of the learned value of the failure pattern; and

an estimation result output function for externally outputting the estimated future failure time.

8. The in-vehicle terminal according to claim 7, wherein

the storage device stores and sorts the failure patterns by production related information relating to vehicle production of the vehicle control systems, and

the in-vehicle terminal further comprises

a failure pattern selecting function for selecting one of the failure patterns corresponding to the production related information in question from the storage device, and

when estimating failure time, the failure time estimating function reads out the one of the failure patterns selected by the failure pattern selecting function from the storage device and carries out estimation by comparing the one of the readout failure patterns and the readout records of the learned values.

9. The in-vehicle terminal according to claim 7, wherein

the storage device further stores vehicle usage environmental information based on vehicle usage information of the vehicle control systems, and stores and sorts the failure patterns by the vehicle usage environmental information, and

the in-vehicle terminal further comprises

a usage environment determining function for reading vehicle usage environmental information based on corresponding vehicle usage information from the storage device, and

a failure pattern selecting function for selecting one of the failure patterns corresponding to the determined usage environmental information from the storage device, and

when estimating failure time, the failure time estimating function reads out the one of the failure patterns selected by the failure pattern selecting function from the storage device, and carries out estimation by comparing the one of the readout failure patterns and the readout records of the learned values.

10. An in-vehicle terminal comprising:

a storage device that stores estimation criteria data for estimating failure time of a vehicle control system based on changes in learned values that are parameters used for compensating control in the vehicle control system to maintain the vehicle control system in an optimum control state, and stores records of the learned values actually used in the past in the control system;

a failure time estimating function for estimating future failure time of the vehicle control system on the basis of learned value changes in the records of the learned values readout from the storage device and the estimation criteria data in the storage device, and

an estimation result output function for externally outputting the estimated future failure time.