OTA empowerment, automotive remote diagnosis enters the era of intelligence

When it comes to the application of OTA in automobiles, I believe that many people's first reaction is to continue to add new functions to vehicles like Tesla. In fact, it is not only that. As one of the basic capabilities of smart cars, OTA not only gives cars a "new and new" driving experience, but can also be used to diagnose and repair vehicle faults, ensuring vehicle safety throughout the life cycle.

Carota's automotive safety protection solution based on "OTA+remote diagnosis" can provide automakers with a comprehensive solution package, including remote monitoring, diagnosis, early warning functions, data analysis and OTA updates, etc. It can monitor potential risks before a failure occurs, and repair and update system problems through OTA upgrades at a later stage.

Image source: Korata

From passive to active, OTA provides new ideas for remote diagnosis

Since Tesla first installed OTA technology on Model S in 2012, it is used to update and upgrade human-computer interaction, power, battery and other systems. After several years of development, OTA has become a basic configuration of smart cars. Looking at the market, more and more car companies are beginning to use OTA as the key to improving product strength and widely install it on new cars.

According to relevant statistics, the number of OTA installations in China was only 2.39 million in 2018, with an installation rate of 11.8%. In 2019, it increased to 3.838 million, a year-on-year increase of 60.6%, and the installation rate increased to 19%. In the future, with the deepening of the transformation of automobile intelligence and networking, the number of automobile OTA installations is expected to continue to grow. By 2025, the number of automobile OTA installations in China may reach 18 million.

The reason why OTA is gaining popularity in the automotive field is that it gives cars the ability to "grow". For example, with SOTA software updates, car companies can continuously upgrade in-car entertainment, navigation and other application software, thereby bringing consumers an intuitive user experience improvement. FOTA firmware upgrades have more room to play in enabling vehicle performance improvement. Not only can they upgrade the electronic control components ECU of air conditioning, chassis, power, ADAS and other systems to improve vehicle performance, but they can also remotely repair vulnerabilities, greatly improving the efficiency of fault diagnosis and processing, and reducing the after-sales costs of car companies and car owners.

Take Tesla as an example. As early as 2013, Tesla tried to improve driving safety by adjusting the vehicle's shock absorber system settings through OTA. In the following years, Tesla used OTA to repair key card vulnerabilities, brake light failures, battery pack defects, infotainment system failures, software security vulnerabilities, etc., providing a new idea for car companies to reduce costs and increase efficiency in after-sales maintenance.

However, unlike Tesla, which often uses OTA to repair vulnerabilities after the system has them, Jacky Chou, vice president of OTA marketing at Carota, said that Carota's in-vehicle intelligent remote diagnosis solution can also be used for pre-emptive prevention. "Our OTA remote diagnosis can detect problems in a timely manner or predict potential risks by monitoring relevant parameters when the vehicle has just left the factory or the owner is driving, thereby helping the vehicle manufacturer to develop an effective response strategy and implement remote repairs, which is more like a proactive protection," said Jacky Chou.

The difference between traditional diagnosis and intelligent remote diagnosis, Image source: Korata

In traditional diagnostic solutions, when a problem occurs with an automobile component, the UDS protocol will save the fault information to the memory, and the maintenance personnel will read the fault information through the communication bus. Its characteristics are that the diagnosis location is limited; wired operation is required; it can only be processed after the vehicle is returned to the factory after an accident, which takes several days; the diagnostic content is limited to DTC fault diagnostic codes; and the data obtained is only DTC related information after the event has occurred, which is a backward indicator.

Compared with traditional diagnostic solutions, Caroda's remote diagnostic technology changes diagnosis from passive to active, and can remotely diagnose vehicles at any time or regularly, and remotely repair faults (with the help of OTA technology). The biggest feature of this diagnostic technology is its initiative. When users find any abnormality in the vehicle, they can save it to the background through voice. For vehicle abnormalities, the background will immediately give feedback through voice or HE, so that car owners can feel at ease at the first time. At the same time, with the assistance of the background, car owners will clearly know some possible problems of the vehicle, and the vehicle manufacturer will also have a more detailed understanding of the vehicle condition, buying more time for subsequent repairs.

In addition, in the past, vehicle fault inspections usually required wired access at a fixed location, and only DTC fault diagnostic codes could be diagnosed. Once a problem was found, it could only be handled by going to a 4S store or even returning the vehicle to the factory. However, intelligent remote diagnosis can be implemented at any time and any place - as long as there is an Internet connection, and DTC fault diagnostic codes, driving status, system load, and abnormal event data can all be diagnosed, which is not only efficient but also greatly saves maintenance costs.

"For example, OTA remote diagnosis can detect and set problems such as black screen, flash back, freeze or insufficient CPU performance of the smart cockpit system, as well as body system and ADAS related faults. Once a problem is found, the system can immediately notify the owner or the vehicle manufacturer, so that the manufacturer can repair the fault or recall it when necessary." Zhou Yizheng pointed out. This means that in addition to SOTA upgrades such as in-vehicle entertainment and autonomous driving software packages, Caroda can also provide FOTA support for automakers in ADAS, autonomous driving, battery management, smart cockpit, power system, braking system, etc.

Because of this, more and more vehicle manufacturers are actively building remote diagnostic capabilities based on OTA. For example, SAIC Volkswagen, FAW-Volkswagen, Toyota, Great Wall, Geely, Chery, Dongfeng Liuzhou Motor, etc. have established close cooperative relations with Caroda. If partners in other fields are included, Caroda currently cooperates with more than 200 companies and has cumulatively performed OTA upgrades on 320 million devices. It can be said to be one of the important enablers of intelligent terminal devices in the era of the Internet of Everything.

From before to after, the entire life cycle enables driving safety

Remote diagnosis is not a new technology in the automotive field, but the highlight of Carota's solution is that it can provide customers with professional OTA vehicle upgrades and intelligent remote diagnosis solutions before, during, or after a fault occurs, ensuring driving safety throughout the entire life cycle.

Specifically, Caroda's remote diagnostic solution consists of four parts: Remote Diagnostic+VSOC+LM OS+OTA Solution. Among them, Remote Diagnostic mainly monitors performance parameter loading, Process operation status, UDS diagnostic protocol, fault warning parameters, etc., and cooperates with edge computing and platform diagnostic interaction to assist car manufacturers in discovering system anomalies. The system and VSOC will be implanted in the vehicle before it goes on the market to predict impending failures in advance.

Carota's in-vehicle remote diagnostic solution. Image source: Carota

"Based on the set data warnings, behavior triggers, abnormal status accumulation judgment and other conditions, in the IVI script analysis, the system can continuously collect communication network, application, hardware performance, operation records, system programs and other status information to analyze and judge the current status of the vehicle and prevent problems before they occur. As for how many abnormalities have occurred, they will be considered to need to be handled immediately. We will have in-depth communication with car companies on such warning setting conditions. It should be pointed out that since remote diagnosis involves a large amount of data collection, the platform will be set up in the vehicle factory. Once the system detects an ECU defect, it will immediately provide a defect report and fault snapshot to the vehicle factory, allowing the car manufacturer or technology provider to respond immediately and discover the problem earlier." said Jacky Zhang, CTO of Caroda

VSOC provides network security protection, including intrusion detection, virtual patch distribution, anomaly detection, vulnerability scanning, vulnerability warning, etc. Through cooperation with Trend Micro, Caroda has a huge security database, and if abnormal access is found, it can quickly notify the car company to prepare for the response.

The LM OS main control center is mainly used to analyze the data collected in the first two systems, provide decision-making basis for the next action of the car companies, and assist in formulating OTA countermeasures. A key point at this stage is to classify and organize the background data and predict and evaluate it, such as how to discover diagnostic trends based on DTC rankings and occurrence trends, and grasp the vehicle status through cross-analysis of vehicle models, vehicle ages, regions and common problems, so that these data will become a very important reference for the future. It is reported that for this purpose, Caroda has specially created a customizable service platform that can be used by car companies for diversified data collection and connect third-party resources.