Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 35 newly granted utility patents for Apple Inc. In this particular report we briefly cover an architecture for fail operations in future autonomous vehicles using sensor pods. And as always, we wrap up this week's granted patent report with our traditional listing of the remaining granted patents that were issued to Apple this week.

Architecture for Fail Operational Automation

 Advances in vehicle automation are proceeding at a rapid pace as more companies become involved in development of automation solutions. Generally, vehicle automation can require highly accurate sensing of the environment in which the vehicle is operating (e.g. the road course, other vehicles, stationary objects, obstructions in the roadway, etc.). The control mechanisms for the vehicle are also required to be highly accurate and resistant to failure when components within the vehicle fail, retaining control of the vehicle and continuing safe operation or bringing the vehicle safely to a stop. These challenges also need to be addressed with an economical and efficient system that can be mass-produced.

Apple's granted patent covers an automation system for a vehicle that may employ a variety of diversities to enhance reliability, accuracy, and stability in automating operation of the vehicle. 

Sensor Pods 

For example, in an embodiment, an automation system for a vehicle may include multiple sensor pods with overlapping fields of view. Each sensor pod may include multiple different sensors in an embodiment, providing diverse views of the environment surrounding the vehicle. The overlapping fields of view may help in the event of a failure of a sensor pod, since the area monitored by the failed sensor pod is at least partially covered by a still-functioning sensor pod.

The overlapping fields of view may also provide multiple views of an object in the environment, which may permit validation of various sensor pods and/or the discard of data from a sensor pod that does not agree with the others, in an embodiment.

A set of sensor pods with overlapping fields of view may also transmit their object data at different points in time, providing diversity in time. Redundancy in other areas, such as the network switches which connect the sensor pods to an automation controller, may also aid in provided fail operational functionality. In some embodiments, multiple sensor processing algorithms may be used to provide diversity in the algorithmic sense as well.

In an embodiment, the sensor pods may include local processing to process the data captured by the sensors into object identification. The amount of data to be communicated between the sensor pods and the automation controller may be substantially reduced, thus reducing the bandwidth needed between the sensor pods and the automation controller. The distribution of processing between the sensor pods and the automation controller may also reduce the amount of processing power implemented in the automation controller, in an embodiment.

Apple's patent FIG. 2 below is a block diagram of an embodiment of a vehicle with another embodiment of an automation system; FIG. 3 is a block diagram of one embodiment of a sensor pod; FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating processing of sensor data in the sensor pod, for one embodiment.

More specifically, FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an embodiment of the vehicle #10 having an automation system including the sensor pods #12A-12F.  Like the sensor pods 12A-12D, the sensor pods 12E-12F are coupled to the automation controller #14, e.g. with a network cable. The sensor pods 12E-12F are placed centrally in the front and rear of the vehicle respectively. That is, the sensor pod #12E is mounted near the center of the front of the vehicle while the sensor pod #12F is mounted near the center of the rear of the vehicle.

For finer details, review Apple's granted patent #11685396.

Some of the Team Members on this Apple Project 

• Fernando Mujica: Director of Engineering, Special Projects Group
• Mark Colosky: Engineering Manager (previously worked at GM, Delphi and Nexteer Automotive)
• Joyce Kwong: Hardware Architect
• Leland Lew: iPhone Lead Hardware Architect

 Today’s Remaining Granted Patents