Surveying Off-Board and Extravehicular Monitoring and Progress Towards Pervasive Diagnostics

We survey the state of the art in off-board diagnostics for vehicles, their occupants, and environments, with particular focus on vibroacoustic (VA) approaches. We identify promising application areas including data-driven management for shared mobility and automated fleets, usage-based insurance, and vehicle, occupant, and environmental state and condition monitoring. We close by exploring the particular application of VA monitoring to vehicle diagnostics and prognostics and propose the introduction of automated vehicle- and context-specific model selection as a means of improving algorithm performance, e.g., to enable smartphone-resident diagnostics. Towards this vision, four strong-performing, interdependent classifiers are presented as a proof of concept for identifying vehicle configuration from acoustic signatures. The described approach may serve as the first step in developing “universal diagnostics,” with applicability extending beyond the automotive domain.