Autonomous Vehicle Electronics: Reliability Challenges and Solutions

Featured in the April issue of  iConnect007's Design007 Magazine.

The era of artificial intelligence-enabled autonomous vehicles is rapidly approaching. Numerous articles and papers have been written about the many technical challenges that need to be solved to achieve consistent functionality, performance, safety and dependability in autonomous vehicles. After these operational issues are addressed, the next challenge will be achieving reliability and durability for years of service under harsh  automotive conditions for the advanced electronics technology that autonomous vehicles require.

Are GPUs Reliable Enough To Be An Autonomous Vehicle’s Brain?

The technologies currently available to or being developed for the automotive industry are staggering. With these advancements comes the need to examine the types of processing units appropriate to power the autonomous vehicle electronics functionality.

Unique Reliability Challenges Presented By Automotive Electronics

Not so neatly categorized is the advent of autonomous vehicles. They offer great potential for improvements to vehicular traffic – increase in highway capacity and traffic flow, faster response times, less fuel consumption and less pollution.

AUTONOMOUS MAINTENANCE AND HEALTH MONITORING OF RECHARGEABLE BATTERIES

A major issue facing the military in the utilization of a lithium ion battery renewable energy source is to develop solutions for the logistical problems associated with self discharge of rechargeable batteries while in storage aboard amphibious vehicles, Maritime Prepositioning Force (MPF) ships, and at ground-based storage facilities. A second issue is having a methodology for rapidly and cost effectively determining the state of health (SOH) of a large number of batteries during storage.