Overview of Telematics-Based Prognostics and Health Management Systems for Commercial Vehicles

Prognostics and Health Management/Monitoring (PHM) are methods to assess the health condition and reliability of systems for the purpose of maximising operational reliability and safety. Recently, PHM systems are emerging in the automotive industry. In the commercial vehicle sector, reducing the maintenance cost and downtime while also improving the reliability of vehicle components can have a major impact on fleet performance and hence business competitiveness. Nowadays, telematics and GPS are used mainly for fleet tracking and diagnostics purposes. Increased numbers of sensors installed on commercial vehicles, advancement of data analytics and computational intelligence methods, increased capabilities for on-board data processing as well as in the cloud, are creating an opportunity for PHM systems to be deployed on commercial vehicles and hence improve the overall operational efficiency.