JP2007286018A - On-board fault diagnosis control device - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To treat simultaneous occurrence of a plurality of faults reasonably, such that because many pieces of information of previous fault records are lost for every designing of new car resulting from utilization of ROM (Read Only Memory) for conventional fault recording devices, establishment of loose-bodied hardware or firmware without uses of ROM as an on-board fault recording device apparatus for each vehicle enables it to correspond to new vehicle family, modification of specification, special specification, and the like by one hardware design. <P>SOLUTION: Weighting is established preliminarily to each fault mode and the aforementioned information processing means is equipped with an arbitration means to implement treatment according to the order of established weighting when during or before implementation of analytical procedures for one fault mode the other fault mode is detected. The arbitration means includes a table establishing the order of the aforementioned weighting. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention is used for failure diagnosis of devices mounted on automobiles and other vehicles. In the present invention, an information processing apparatus designed in common for many vehicles across vehicle types is mounted as an OBD (On Board Diagnostic) control apparatus, and this is used for a plurality of pieces of failure information in a tree mode. This is for use in a method that employs FTA (Fault Tree Analysis) processing that can systematically grasp the cause of the failure by organizing them using. In particular, the present invention relates to arbitration control when a plurality of failure modes are detected.

Each vehicle is equipped with an OBD control device that complies with internationally standardized standards to carry out activities to reduce air pollution and other pollution caused by vehicles. The standard referred to as OBD-I was first introduced in the United States in 1988,
(1) The vehicle is equipped with an electronic system that can be self-managed.
(2) Exhaust gas related faults are indicated on a fault lamp mounted on the dashboard.
(3) The fault is recorded in the fault memory of the control unit and can be read using the on-board diagnostic device.
Etc. are defined. Later (1991), SAE (United States Automotive Engineers Association) and ISO (International Organization for Standardization) established a standard called OBD-II, and from 1994 to all gasoline vehicles in the United States, This was to be applied to diesel vehicles.

  The applicant of the present application has contributed to such activities as reducing pollution in accordance with such unified standards by making several proposals. On the other hand, in recent years, program control devices have rapidly improved in performance and have become cheaper, and the operation of the control device hardware has also stabilized. As a result, it is becoming technically and economically possible to mount a program control device having a considerably high capacity in each vehicle and to operate it on a regular basis as the vehicle operates.

  On the other hand, even if one form is adopted as a program control device to analyze and record elements for searching for the cause of a failure occurring in the vehicle, the progress of the program control device is rapid, and within a short period of time The technology will become obsolete. In addition, new technical ideas have been introduced, and it has been difficult to standardize records related to device failures by providing a uniform device to many vehicles.

JP 10-78376 (Nissan Diesel) On-Board Diagnostic System Requirements for 2010 and Subsequent Model-year Heavy-duty Engines, Title 13, California Code Regulations, Section 1971.1

  Conventionally, failure diagnosis devices and software installed in vehicles are recorded in ROM (Read Only Memory) as a general rule. When a new model is developed, new failure diagnosis logic is reconfigured accordingly. A design and development form is adopted in which each is set in a new ROM. In this mode, failure diagnosis for the vehicle type can be reasonably supported, but a new ROM is designed and developed each time a new vehicle type is developed. The design man-hours required for this increase. In this conventional form, failure data cannot be effectively used beyond the development cycle of a new vehicle type in many cases. That is, in this conventional mode, the OBD system and the recorded contents are changed for each new vehicle type, and there is a problem that the continuity of technology cannot be effectively maintained. To solve this, it is necessary to standardize OBD accordingly across vehicle types and ages.

  Here, the OBD is merely an in-vehicle device, and in order to read and use the data recorded in the OBD, an information processing device for reading the information recorded in the OBD in accordance with an operation and using it for analysis is used. Is done. For this purpose, an information processing apparatus with appropriate performance must be installed in a service factory or the like.

  A single vehicle is equipped with a large number of functions, and these functions operate in association with each other. When a failure occurs in one function, the other functions are often affected. One form of the effect is that other functions become related and become faulty. For example, if a malfunction occurs in the intake system, the operation of the internal combustion engine receiving the air supply from the intake system becomes abnormal. If a failure occurs in the pneumatic system mounted on the vehicle, the failure occurs in relation to a plurality of control systems that use the air pressure.

  The present invention discloses an OBD that has been studied by the present inventors in the form of a patent application as one proposal for standardization of OBD, that is, standardization effective over a long period exceeding the development cycle of a new vehicle type. It is. Here, the OBD is merely an observation recording device, and the introduction or advancement of new equipment mounted on the vehicle should not be hindered by designing the OBD form conservatively.

  In other words, the present invention is an apparatus (OBD) that can be mounted on an individual vehicle and can identify an element related to the cause of a failure that occurs in the vehicle, and basically changes in design even if peripheral technology advances. It is an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus which can be continuously used as a standard for a corresponding long period of time. The present invention relates to a form of an on-board failure diagnosis device (OBD) capable of recording failure states occurring in individual vehicles and their causes as uniformly as possible throughout various vehicle types and ages, and statistically processing the records. The purpose is to provide. An object of the present invention is to provide a configuration that does not require a large number of man-hours for designing an on-vehicle failure diagnosis device (OBD) in designing a new vehicle type.

  In particular, the present invention relates to the on-board failure diagnosis device (OBD), when a plurality of failures occur simultaneously, that is, when another failure occurs before one failure analysis is completed, the processing order is clarified and the cause of the failure An object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus capable of accurately identifying the above.

  The present invention is an apparatus to be mounted on an individual vehicle, and uses a standardized form of FTA (Fault Tree Analysis) as a tool for analyzing the cause of failure when the failure occurs. This stylized form of FTA is a device in which a standard tree procedure for analyzing the cause of a failure is implemented, and a hardware device having a sufficiently large capacity is used as a calculation memory. Even if there is a change in the vehicle design, a newly developed vehicle uses a common specification device that has been used for a long time. Even if a newly developed vehicle has new equipment and functions that are not installed in the conventional vehicle, in principle, the device of the failure analysis procedure of the same specification is used. The software corresponding to the newly added equipment is designed so that it can be additionally installed in the margin of the memory. If there is a device that is not used in the new design, the software corresponding to that device is simply set to hibernate. Here, in the present invention, when a plurality of failures occur simultaneously or one failure occurs and the cause of the failure is specified but another failure occurs before completion, the order in which the failure causes are determined in advance is determined in advance. The greatest feature is to investigate the cause of failure according to the order.

  That is, the present invention relates to a failure tree in which a plurality of functional units that detect respective failure modes for a large number of functions provided in one vehicle and a plurality of monitoring information respectively transmitted from the plurality of functional units are standardized. In the in-vehicle failure diagnosis and control apparatus in which the information processing means that collectively processes and stores according to the analysis procedure is mounted on the one vehicle, each of the failure modes is pre-weighted, and the information processing means When another failure mode is detected before or during execution of the mode analysis procedure, arbitration means is provided for executing the processing in the order of the set weights.

  The arbitration unit may include a table for setting the order of weighting. A communication means for coupling the information processing means and a failure diagnosis control means provided outside the vehicle at any time can be provided.

  According to the present invention, data based on a common standard regarding a failure of a device mounted on a vehicle can be obtained over a long period exceeding the development cycle of a plurality of vehicle designs, and also when a plurality of failure causes occur simultaneously or successively. The cause of the failure can be pursued accurately.

  FIG. 1 is a block diagram of the OBD control system of the present invention. The in-vehicle sensor group 2 and the functional unit group 3 are connected to the OBD control device 1 by communication line signal lines, respectively. By obtaining operation data and characteristic values from the in-vehicle sensor group 2 and the functional unit group 3, the OBD control device 1 weights the failure modes in the FTA used when a plurality of failures are detected simultaneously. As a result, the processing order, more specifically, the failure information storage order, the recovery-processing order, and the like are determined, and the failure information such as lighting of the failure indicator lamp 9 and the failure code is recorded or output to the outside.

  FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of the structure of the FTA group. The FTA group 7 includes an exhaust gas deterioration factor characteristic data table group 12 and a functional unit-fault code table group 13. The exhaust gas deterioration factor characteristic data table group 12 includes data of the first event characteristics (in this embodiment, the exhaust gas name, threshold value, etc.) that are the targets of failure detection, and event cause characteristic data groups for the first event characteristic values. The failure occurrence functional unit ID (in this example, a number, an address, etc.) for finally specifying the failure site is included. By using the exhaust gas deterioration factor characteristic data table group 12 for processing, a failure occurrence functional unit can be specified. The functional unit-fault code table group 13 includes fault detection reference data for parts and characteristics for each functional unit. By processing these, it is possible to specify a failure site for one failure.

  FIG. 3 shows the contents of the exhaust gas deterioration factor characteristic data table group 12. As shown in the table, one data table is held for each exhaust gas with the exhaust gas value as the first event. This is a collection of all the first data tables. The functional unit-fault code table group 13 has one data table for each functional unit. This is a collection of all functional unit data tables.

  In each item of the exhaust gas deterioration factor characteristic data table group 12 and the functional unit-failure code table group 13, a numerical value for determining the priority is registered. By calculating and comparing these numerical values, The processing order, failure information storage order, recovery-processing order, and the like can be determined.

  FIG. 4 shows an example of the exhaust gas deterioration factor characteristic data table format. In this data table, the exhaust gas deterioration factor characteristic data table group 12 exists as one data table for each first event characteristic. Furthermore, this data table is variable-length data, and the arrangement or contents of the data can be changed by the OBD control software to be created and the hardware on which the OBD control software is installed.

  FIG. 5 shows an example of a functional unit-fault code table format. In the functional unit-fault code table group 13 described above, there is one data table for each functional unit. Further, this data table is variable-length data, and the data arrangement and charts are shown by the OBD control software to be created and the hardware equipped with the OBD control software. The contents can be varied.

  FIG. 6 shows an embodiment of a schematic processing flowchart of priority order determination using FTA. This relates to a case where a plurality of failures occur simultaneously. Operation data is acquired from the functional unit group 3, and a signal from the in-vehicle sensor is acquired (step S201). A plurality of failures (failures A and B) are detected by the failure detection process (step S202). Further, internal or external FTA group information is acquired (step S203). Then, the priority order of the faults A and B is determined (step S204). If the fault A has a higher priority, the 1st to αth order characteristic data is analyzed, and if the characteristic change tendency matches, the flag of the characteristic is turned ON (step S205).

  From the result of the analysis performed by this procedure, the functional unit ID corresponding to the matched characteristic is set, and the corresponding functional unit-fault code table is acquired from the functional unit-fault code table group 13 (step S206). The component characteristics of the functional unit-fault code table are collated with the first to nth fault detection criteria, respectively, and the detection criteria flag is turned ON (step S207).

  If there are a plurality of failure causes for which the detection criterion flag is set, they are sorted by priority (step S208). A failure code is set according to the sorted cause of failure (step S209).

  Further, in the example of the schematic processing procedure for priority determination using the FTA shown in FIG. 6 (when a plurality of failures occur simultaneously), when failure A has a lower priority, failure B is the same as failure A described above. Processing is performed (step S210). If the priorities are the same, the processing is FIFO (First In First Out).

  In the example of the rough processing procedure for determining the priority order using the FTA in FIG. 6 (when multiple failures occur simultaneously), if the recovery processing is necessary after the processing of the failure A or the failure B is completed, the processing is performed in the sorted order. Recovery processing is performed (step S211).

  In the above description, the case where two failures occur simultaneously as the simultaneous failure has been described. However, the above logic can be executed in the same manner even when three or more failures occur simultaneously. In that case, it takes time for processing. When failures with the same priority level occur, processing is performed in the order of FIFO (first in first out), that is, in the order of occurrence.

  With this invention, it is possible to accumulate common data necessary for vehicle design beyond the development cycle of new vehicles, so even if the person in charge of design changes generations, specific know-how necessary for vehicle design is preserved for a long period of time. can do.

The block block diagram of this invention Example OBD control apparatus. The block diagram of this invention Example FTA. The more detailed block diagram of this invention Example FTA. The figure which shows the example of exhaust gas deterioration factor characteristic data table format. The figure which shows the example of the failure code table format corresponding to a functional unit. FIG. 5 is a flowchart of an embodiment of the present invention for prioritization using FTA.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 OBD control apparatus 2 In-vehicle sensor group 3 Functional unit group 4 Functional unit communication processing means 5 Failure cause identification means 6 Failure information management means 7 FTA group 8 External communication processing means 9 Failure indicator lamp 10 Failure arbitration means 12 Exhaust gas deterioration factor characteristic data Table group 13 Functional unit-Fault code table group

Claims (3)

A plurality of functional units that detect respective failure modes for a large number of functions provided in one vehicle, and a plurality of pieces of monitoring information respectively transmitted from the plurality of functional units are collectively processed by a standardized failure tree analysis procedure. In-vehicle fault diagnosis and control apparatus mounted on the one vehicle with information processing means for processing and storing
Weighting is set in advance for each failure mode, and the information processing means, when another failure mode is detected before or during execution of the analysis procedure of one failure mode, in accordance with the set weighting order. A vehicle-mounted fault diagnosis control device comprising mediation means for executing processing.   The in-vehicle failure diagnosis control apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the arbitration unit includes a table for setting the order of the weighting.   The in-vehicle failure diagnosis control device according to claim 1, further comprising a communication unit that connects the information processing unit and a failure diagnosis control unit provided outside the vehicle as needed.

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