JP2006088821A - Vehicular failure diagnosing method, failure diagnosis system, on-vehicle device, failure analysis device, and failure diagnosis device - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To facilitate specifying of a failure part and investigating of a failure cause, by providing diagnosing information to failure diagnosis while storing the information in association with spot information and date and time when the failure occurs. <P>SOLUTION: The on-vehicle device monitors the diagnosing information of various ECU, and stores the diagnosing information at the time of failure occurrence with a road state obtained from vehicular position information. The correlation of failure contents and a road state at the time of the failure occurrence is analyzed on the basis of information stored by the failure analysis device. Referring to the analysis result, specifying of the failure part and investigating of the failure cause are carried out. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a vehicle failure diagnosis method and a failure diagnosis system.

  With the progress of microprocessors, recent vehicles have adopted electronic control devices using microprocessors in various places. Such an electronic control device (hereinafter referred to as ECU) greatly contributes to improvement of the running performance, safety, comfort, etc. of the vehicle. However, since the control is performed electronically and is complicated and sophisticated, the occurrence of a failure occurs. It is difficult to find the cause and the cause only by intuition and experience. For this reason, these ECUs are equipped with a self-diagnostic program, which periodically checks and records the operating status of the sensor and the microprocessor itself, and specifies a diagnostic code (diagnostics) that identifies the contents when an abnormality or failure occurs. Abbreviation of code, meaning abnormality and failure code) and freeze frame data (a data string that holds data of various sensors at that time when abnormality or failure is judged). Has been done.

  However, because recent vehicles often control multiple ECUs in cooperation with each other, it is difficult to identify the specific location and cause of an abnormality or failure from the diagnosis code or freeze frame data. There are many cases. In order to solve such a problem, an attempt has been made to import a recorded diag code into a dedicated computer and to specify the location of the failure and the cause of the failure using a dedicated failure diagnosis program.

For example, Patent Document 1 discloses a system that takes a diag code or the like into a computer of a user or car dealer and analyzes it. However, in the case of this system, information obtained by various sensors as state detection means is only taken into a computer for analysis, so that it is not possible to specify a specific fault location by using only this information. There are many cases.
Further, in Patent Document 2, a management computer that collects information from a plurality of ECUs and performs failure diagnosis is mounted on a vehicle, and a failure diagnosis program is sent from the server outside the vehicle to the mounted computer to identify a failure location. Techniques to do this are disclosed.

However, some of the malfunctions detected as abnormal or faulty are those that appear only when traveling under certain road conditions, and tend to occur when traveling under certain road conditions. There is a bug with it. For example, when driving on an uphill, downhill, driving down a mountain road with many sharp curves, driving on a highway for a long time, driving on a cold region for a long time, driving on a bad road with poor road surface conditions This is a problem that appears at a specific location in the middle. With regard to problems that appear when traveling under specific road conditions of this type, the location of the problem, the road conditions at that time, and the date and time may not be known to identify the fault location and investigate the cause of the problem. Many.
JP 2001-296915 A Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-19931

  The present invention has been made to solve such problems of the prior art, and the problem is that the diagnostic information such as the diagnostic code and freeze frame data is recorded in association with the location information and the date and time when the malfunction occurred. It is an object of the present invention to provide a vehicle failure diagnosis method and a failure diagnosis system that facilitates identification of a failure location and investigation of the cause of the failure by providing the diagnosis.

  The invention according to claim 1 for solving the above-mentioned problem is a vehicle failure diagnosis method that monitors diagnosis information of various electronic control devices mounted on the vehicle, and displays the diagnosis information at the time of failure, Storing vehicle position information, a stage stored with road conditions obtained by referring to map data based on the vehicle position information, and a correlation between failure contents found from the diagnosis information and road conditions based on the stored information And a step of analyzing the vehicle fault diagnosis method.

Here, the failure includes a minor failure called abnormality, failure, etc. (hereinafter the same in this specification). The diagnosis information is diagnostic information obtained by the failure diagnosis function of the electronic control unit (ECU), and refers to the diagnosis code (failure code), the sensor detection values before and after the failure occurrence, and freeze frame data that records the operation status. .
Among failures detected as failures, there are failures that appear only when traveling under specific road conditions, and failures that tend to occur under specific road conditions. Therefore, if the correlation between the failure content and the road situation obtained by referring to the map data based on the vehicle position information at the time of the failure is analyzed, it is possible to easily identify the failure location and investigate the cause of the failure.

The invention according to claim 2 is the vehicle failure diagnosis method according to claim 1, wherein after analyzing the correlation between the content of the failure and a road condition, the failure is considered in consideration of the analysis result. The method further includes a step of identifying a vehicle failure point and investigating the cause of the failure based on the contents and the diagnosis information.
It is possible for repair personnel to identify the location of the failure and investigate the cause of the failure based on the correlation analysis results between the road conditions and the details of the failure. Without relying on it, it becomes possible to quickly identify the fault location and investigate the cause of the fault.

According to a third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a vehicle failure diagnosis system comprising an in-vehicle device and a failure analysis device, wherein the in-vehicle device detects the position of the vehicle and maps it to a road on a map. Diagnostic information of the vehicle position detecting means to be positioned and various electronic control devices mounted on the vehicle is monitored, and the diagnostic information at the time of failure is obtained by referring to the map data based on the date and time, the vehicle position information, and the vehicle position information. A diagnosis information monitoring means for storing the information together with road conditions, wherein the failure analysis apparatus obtains the stored information and analyzes the correlation between the failure contents recorded in the diagnosis information in the information and the road conditions. A vehicle fault diagnosis system characterized by the above.
According to the fault diagnosis system having such a configuration, an effect similar to that of the first aspect of the invention can be obtained.

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, there is provided the vehicle failure diagnosis system according to the third aspect, wherein the failure analysis device takes into account the result of the analysis and the vehicle based on the failure content and diagnostic information. It is characterized by further identifying the location of the failure and investigating the cause of the failure.
According to the failure diagnosis system having such a configuration, an effect similar to that of the invention described in claim 2 can be obtained.

  According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a vehicle position detecting means for detecting the position of the vehicle and positioning the vehicle on a road on the map, and monitoring the diagnosis information of various electronic control devices mounted on the vehicle so that the diagnosis at the time of failure occurs. An in-vehicle apparatus comprising: a date and time information, vehicle position information, and diagnostic information monitoring means for storing information together with road conditions obtained by referring to map data based on the vehicle position information.

If the diagnosis information is stored together with the vehicle position information and the date and time by the in-vehicle device having such a configuration, it is possible to determine whether or not the failure appears under a specific road condition by analyzing the data later. Compared with the same type of failure data in the past, it is possible to easily identify the failure location and investigate the cause of the failure.
The invention described in claim 6 is based on the information stored by the diagnosis information monitoring means described in claim 5 and analyzes the correlation between the failure content recorded in the diagnosis information in the information and the road condition. This is a vehicle failure analysis device characterized by the following.

  Among failures detected as failures, there are failures that appear only when traveling under certain road conditions. Therefore, if the correlation between the road condition obtained by referring to the map data based on the vehicle position information at the time of the failure and the content of the failure is analyzed, it is possible to easily identify the failure location and investigate the cause of the failure.

  The invention according to claim 7 is the vehicle failure analysis device according to claim 6, wherein the failure location of the vehicle is identified based on the failure content and the diagnosis information in consideration of the result of the analysis, It is characterized by further investigating the cause of the failure.

  It is possible for repair personnel to identify the location of the failure and investigate the cause of the failure based on the correlation analysis results between the road conditions and the details of the failure. Without relying on it, it becomes possible to quickly identify the fault location and investigate the cause of the fault.

  Further, the invention described in claim 8 is configured such that the vehicle-mounted device according to claim 5 and the vehicle failure analysis device according to claim 6 or 7 are integrally configured so as to be mounted on the vehicle. This is a vehicle failure diagnosis apparatus.

  According to the failure diagnosis apparatus having such a configuration, it is possible to quickly identify the failure location and investigate the cause of failure in the vehicle when a failure occurs.

  Hereinafter, an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 shows the configuration of a vehicle fault diagnosis system according to the present invention. The failure diagnosis system 1 includes an in-vehicle device 2 and a failure analysis device 3. The in-vehicle device 2 and the failure analysis device 3 are connected so as to be able to exchange information via wireless communication and the general-purpose communication network 4.

  The in-vehicle device 2 is a device having a navigation function, and includes a control circuit 6, a GPS receiver 7, an operation switch group 8, a display device 9, an audio output device 10, a communication device 11, and a magnetic disk device (hereinafter referred to as HDD). ) 12. The control circuit 6 has a function of controlling the overall operation of the in-vehicle device 2 and is mainly composed of a microcomputer. Inside the CPU, RAM, ROM, a bus connecting them, an I / O interface, a power source Equipment.

  The GPS receiver 7 receives a signal from a GPS artificial satellite and transmits it to the control circuit 6. Based on the information, necessary arithmetic processing is performed in the control circuit 6 to calculate the current position of the vehicle. The The operation switch group 8 is for inputting commands and data to the control circuit 6, and is composed of, for example, a touch switch, a remote control switch, a voice input device and the like formed on a color liquid crystal display. The display device 9 is used to display a road map for navigation, a current position of a vehicle, a travel route, and the like in addition to displaying failure information to be described later.

  The voice output device 10 is used to transmit the output information from the control circuit 6 to the driver instead of artificial voice, and is used, for example, to transmit route guidance information. The communication device 11 is for exchanging information with the failure analysis device 3, but is also used for receiving road traffic information from a VICS (Vehicle Information & Communication System).

  In the HDD 12, a map database for performing navigation, a diagnostic information database for storing diagnostic information to be described later, and various programs for operating the in-vehicle device 2 are stored in advance. This program includes a program for executing a general car navigation function in addition to a program for exerting the functions of the present invention, which will be described later, for example, a function for calculating a current position based on a signal from the GPS receiver 7 A map matching processing function that positions the calculated current position on the map, a route search function that searches for a route from the current position to the destination in response to designation of the destination or waypoint, and a guidance route according to the route search result A program for executing a route guidance function for displaying and guiding on a map screen, a function for receiving road traffic information from VICS (Vehicle Information & Communication System) and notifying a driver is included.

In addition to the devices described above, the in-vehicle device 2 includes a vehicle speed sensor that detects a vehicle speed, a distance sensor that detects a travel distance, a vehicle body direction sensor that detects a vehicle body direction, and vertical / front / rear / left / right accelerations of the vehicle. An acceleration sensor for detecting the vehicle body, a vehicle body inclination angle sensor for detecting the vehicle body inclination angle, and the like are attached as necessary.
The in-vehicle device 2 can also exchange information with an ECU group 14 mounted on the vehicle via an in-vehicle LAN. Examples of the ECU mounted on the vehicle include an engine ECU 15, a brake ECU 16, an automatic ECU 17, an air conditioner ECU 18, an electronic meter ECU 19, an airbag ECU 20, and the like.

  The failure analysis device 3 includes a control device 22, an operation switch group 23, a display device 24, and an HDD 25. The control device 22 has a computer function. In the HDD 25, a program for failure analysis and failure diagnosis, which will be described later, is stored. The control device 22 is connected to the general-purpose communication network 4 so that the communication network 4 and the in-vehicle device 2 can communicate wirelessly. Therefore, the control device 22 can acquire the diagnosis information stored in the diagnosis information database held by the in-vehicle device 2.

  Next, a vehicle failure diagnosis method under such a configuration will be described with reference to the flowcharts of FIGS. The flow of FIG. 2 represents the process from when the in-vehicle device 2 detects that a failure (including what is called an abnormality or failure) has occurred in the vehicle, and collects related failure information and stores it in the database. It is.

  In the first step S1, the diagnosis information of each ECU mounted on the vehicle is sequentially monitored. This diagnosis information is monitored mainly on parameter values at which failure signs are likely to appear. For example, the engine ECU monitors whether or not the oxygen concentration value in the exhaust gas exceeds a certain value. This is because if the oxygen concentration in the exhaust gas exceeds a certain value, it is considered that a failure has already occurred or is about to occur. Note that the monitored parameter value is stored as a sampling value within a predetermined time on a first-in first-out principle. This is to facilitate the investigation of the cause of the failure by grasping the change state of the parameter value (freeze frame data) before the failure occurs later.

  In the subsequent step S2, it is determined whether or not a failure has occurred based on the monitored parameter value. The determination of the occurrence of failure is made by determining whether or not the monitored parameter value exceeds a threshold value determined for each parameter. In this case, a plurality of threshold values may be set for one parameter value. In that case, for example, when the first threshold value is exceeded even once, it is determined as a failure immediately, and when the second threshold value is exceeded N times within a predetermined time, it is determined as a failure. A threshold value is determined in advance as a value to be used.

  If it is determined as a result of the check that no failure has occurred, the process returns to step S1. If it is determined that a failure has occurred, the process proceeds to step S3. In step S3, the diagnostic code of the ECU in which the failure has occurred and related information related to the failure are acquired. As related information, information (freeze frame data) stored in the ECU related to the failure can be acquired. There is also information that can be obtained by making determinations on the in-vehicle device 2 side and instructing the ECU with items. As related information, for example, in the event of a failure in the engine ECU, engine speed, intake air temperature, air-fuel ratio, presence / absence of misfire, etc. may be considered. Moreover, the data before the failure occurrence stored in step S1 is also acquired.

  In subsequent step S4, vehicle position information and date / time information at the time of occurrence of the failure are acquired. Vehicle position information is detected by vehicle position detection means. The vehicle position detection means includes a GPS receiver 7, a control circuit 6, a map database, a program for calculating position coordinates, and a program for map matching. The GPS receiver 7 receives signals from a plurality of GPS artificial satellites, and calculates a current position of the vehicle using a program for detecting position coordinates based on the signals. Then, the control circuit 6 is notified of the calculated position coordinates.

  The position coordinates of the vehicle calculated in this way include an error. Therefore, the control circuit 6 performs map matching processing for correcting the vehicle position on the premise that the vehicle is traveling on the road and positioning it on the road of the map read from the map database. This process positions the vehicle on the nearest road on the map. Thus, the position coordinates on the road of the vehicle are determined.

  If the position coordinates on the road are determined by the vehicle position detection means, the in-vehicle device 2 acquires the link ID of the road at that position. The map database stores road data for drawing a road on a background map, for use in route search, and route guidance. In the road data, intersections, turning points, dead ends, and the like of each road are defined as nodes, roads between the respective nodes are defined as links (road sections), and road links are configured by connecting the links. When the vehicle position is positioned on the nearest road by the vehicle position detection means, the link at that point is known. The in-vehicle device 2 acquires an ID (index) that identifies the link that has been found.

  In the road data, link information for each link is stored. The link information is a collection of various information about the link, such as connection information with the links before and after, information on the coordinates / shape of the link, traffic regulation information such as vehicle speed limit / weight limit, road type, and the like. The link shape relationship includes items that may be related to the occurrence of a failure, such as link length, vehicle width, link bending, slope, road surface condition, and the like.

In step S5, the link ID and the link information stored in the road data in association with the link ID are also acquired from the map database based on the detected position information. Then, it is stored in the diagnostic information database together with the failure related information such as the diagnostic code and freeze frame data and the date / time information.
After the failure information is stored in the diagnosis information database in this way, the failure content detected in step S6 is notified to the driver by the display device 9 and the voice output device 10, and the process returns to step S1 again.

  As described above, the in-vehicle device 2 of the present embodiment does not store the failure related information alone or only in association with the date / time information, but further, the location information where the failure has occurred and the link information obtained from the location information ( The road condition is included.) And is stored in association with it.

  Next, a processing flow performed by the failure analysis apparatus 3 will be described with reference to FIG. In the first step T1, information stored in the diagnosis information database of the in-vehicle device 2 is collected. This information is collected via wireless communication and the general-purpose communication network 4 as shown in FIG. However, when both can be brought close to each other, they may be collected by connecting with a wire, or may be transferred via a storage medium such as a CD or DVD. Moreover, the flow of FIG. 3 may be started by a request from the in-vehicle device 2 side or by a request from the failure analysis device 3 side.

  When the collection of the failure related information stored in the diagnosis information database is completed, the process proceeds to step T2 and the failure analysis is executed based on the collected information. In this failure analysis, the correlation between the failure content and the road condition at the time of failure is mainly examined. Some failures are likely to appear when traveling under certain road conditions. For example, when driving on an uphill, downhill, driving down a mountain road with many sharp curves, driving on a highway for a long time, driving on a cold region for a long time, driving on a bad road with poor road surface conditions It is a failure that appears in a specific part of the vehicle when it is moderate. For faults that tend to appear when traveling under specific road conditions of this type, the location of the fault, the road conditions at that time, and the date and time of the failure must be identified. It is often impossible to investigate.

  The failure-related information collected in step T1 includes failure information, diagnosis information, failure occurrence date and time link information, as well as failure location link information, and the link information includes information on road conditions. ing. Therefore, by analyzing the correlation between failure details, diagnosis information and road conditions, it is possible to analyze whether the failure always occurs in a specific road situation or whether it tends to occur in a specific road situation. It becomes. In this case, it is preferable to store the relationship between the road condition and the failure content, which has been clarified in the past analysis, as data in the failure analysis device 3 and analyze the data with reference to the data.

As a result of such analysis, if it turns out that the failure that occurred is a failure that occurs in a specific road situation, or a failure that tends to occur in a specific road situation, it is easy to identify the fault location and investigate the cause of the failure Become. On the other hand, when it is found that the failure is unrelated to the road condition, it is easier to identify the failure location and investigate the cause of the failure than when the failure is not known.
In step T3, the result obtained by such an analysis is displayed on the display device 2 for notification. The analysis result is information that informs whether or not there is a relation between the failure that has occurred and the road condition, and is not information that specifies the failure location and the cause of the failure. The identification of the failure location and the investigation of the cause of the failure are further performed based on the analysis result.

  The person in charge of repair may identify the location of the failure based on the analysis result and investigate the cause of the failure. However, in order to quickly identify, quickly investigate, or investigate without relying on experience or intuition, It is advisable to use a fault diagnosis program in In step T4, referring to the analysis result in step T2, analyzing the failure contents collected in step T1, diagnosis information such as diagnosis code and freeze frame data, and other failure-related information to identify the failure location and cause of failure To investigate. The result thus found is displayed on the display device 24 for notification and the process is terminated.

  As described above, in the vehicle failure diagnosis system 1 according to the present invention, when a failure occurs, the failure content, diagnosis information, and other failure-related information are displayed together with the location information, link information, and date / time information of the failure occurrence location in the diagnosis information database. Remember it. Then, the stored information is analyzed to first analyze whether or not the failure that has occurred is a failure that occurs only when traveling under a specific road condition or a failure that tends to occur. Then, with reference to the analysis results, failure diagnosis is advanced in the order of final failure location identification and failure cause investigation. Since many failures occur in relation to road conditions, the effect of facilitating the identification of the final failure location and investigation of the cause of the failure by analyzing the relationship with the road conditions in this way. Play.

In the above embodiment, the ring information is acquired from the map database based on the link ID of the failure occurrence point and stored in the diagnosis information database on the in-vehicle device 2 side. Instead, only the link ID may be stored in the diagnosis information database, and the failure analysis device 3 may be equipped with a map database so that the ring information can be read therefrom.
In the above-described embodiment, as shown in FIG. 1, the in-vehicle device 2 and the failure analysis device 3 are configured as separate devices, but these two devices are integrally configured and mounted on the vehicle as a failure diagnosis device. May be. Such a configuration has an advantage that when a failure occurs, a failure diagnosis can be immediately performed on the spot.

  In the embodiment, the diagnostic information monitoring means described in the claims is composed of a control circuit 7, a GPS receiver 7, a diagnostic information database, and a program for executing the flow of FIG.

It is a block diagram which shows the whole structure of the failure diagnosis system which concerns on this invention. It is a control flow figure which the vehicle equipment 2 performs. It is a control flow figure which failure analysis device 3 performs.

Explanation of symbols

  In the drawings, 1 is a failure diagnosis system, 2 is an in-vehicle device, 3 is a failure analysis device, 4 is a general-purpose communication network, 6 is a control circuit, 7 is a GPS receiver, 8 is an operation switch group, 9 is a display device, and 10 is a display device. An audio output device, 11 is a communication device, 12 is an HDD, 22 is a control device, 23 is an operation switch group, 2 is a display device, and 25 is an HDD.

Claims (8)

A vehicle failure diagnosis method that monitors diagnosis information of various electronic control devices mounted on a vehicle and refers to map data based on date and time, vehicle position information, and vehicle position information for diagnosis information when a failure occurs. The stage to remember with the road conditions obtained,
A vehicle failure diagnosis method comprising: analyzing a correlation between a failure content determined from the diagnosis information and a road condition based on the stored information.   After analyzing the correlation between the content of the failure and the road condition, the method further includes the step of identifying the location of the vehicle failure and investigating the cause of the failure based on the failure content and the diagnosis information in consideration of the analysis result. The vehicle failure diagnosis method according to claim 1. A vehicle failure diagnosis system comprising an in-vehicle device and a failure analysis device,
The in-vehicle device detects vehicle position by detecting the position of the vehicle and positions it on the road on the map; monitors diagnostic information of various electronic control devices mounted on the vehicle; A position information and a diagnosis information monitoring means for storing the road information obtained by referring to the map data based on the vehicle position information;
The vehicle failure diagnosis system characterized in that the failure analysis device acquires the stored information and analyzes the correlation between the failure content recorded in the diagnosis information in the information and the road condition.   The vehicle failure analysis apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the failure analysis apparatus further identifies a failure location of the vehicle and investigates a cause of the failure based on the failure content and diagnosis information in consideration of the analysis result. Fault diagnosis system.   Vehicle position detection means for detecting the position of the vehicle and positioning it on the road on the map, monitoring the diagnosis information of various electronic control devices mounted on the vehicle, and displaying the diagnosis information at the time of failure, date and time, vehicle position information, vehicle An in-vehicle apparatus, comprising: a diagnosis information monitoring unit that stores a road condition obtained by referring to map data based on position information.   6. A vehicle failure analysis apparatus that analyzes a correlation between a failure content recorded in the diagnosis information in the information and a road condition based on information stored by the diagnosis information monitoring means according to claim 5.   7. The vehicle failure analysis apparatus according to claim 6, further comprising: identifying a failure location of the vehicle and investigating the cause of the failure based on the failure content and the diagnosis information in consideration of the analysis result. An in-vehicle device according to claim 5 and a vehicle failure analysis device according to claim 6 or 7 are integrally configured so as to be mounted on a vehicle.

Images