MULTI-COMPUTER VEHICLE CONTROL SYSTEM WITH SELF-VALIDATING FEATURES

摘要

An automatic vehicle control system for controlling the operation of a vehicle from a set of parallel operating computers in a central control station. A data communication link transmits vehicle performance reports from the vehicle to the central control station and transmits vehicle command messages from the central control station to the vehicle. Validating circuitry in the vehicle validates received vehicle command messages by verifying the messages originated from both computers in the central control station. A portion of the vehicle command message included in the vehicle performance report is subsequently used by the two computers to validate the performance report message transmitted from the vehicle to the central control station.