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Challenge Overview

1. Overview

Renesas (the client) is a semiconductor vendor that is well known for having high reliability in automotive semiconductors and is one of the top vendors in the market.
 
The client is moving forward to push its reliability one stage further, by having a technology not just to detect failures when it happens, but to predict failures on these semiconductors beforehand.
 
In this challenge, the client is asking Topcoder community to come up with new service ideas that can benefit from this new prediction technology. Such as an idea for future fleet managements where autonomous or self driving cars becomes popular. The service is assumed to be implemented on cloud platforms.
 
Can you come up with innovative new service idea for future that has never seen nor thought of yet, using this new prediction technology?
Good Luck!
 
PLEASE NOTE : There will be a checkpoint you can submit for in order to receive feedback and potentially one of five $100 prizes - In order to be eligible for a checkpoint prize you must submit to this challenge by April 8 2018 23:00 UTC (19:00 EDT). - We've detailed exactly what we're expecting as outputs below. Please refer “Checkpoint” section below.
 

1.1. Background

In near future, it is expected that, by the change of mobility services environment, many new businesses that we have not seen yet will arise. Especially with the rise of autonomous and self driving cars, it is easily thought that these cars will be continuously operated at high load  in order to achieve cost effectiveness.
 
For these severe usage conditions, the conventional technology could only prevent failures using simple indexes such as the accumulated travel distance of the odometer or tire wear, and use these indexes to perform regular inspection. In the case of fleet management, these indexes were used to distribute cars work loads evenly by rotating cars.
 
The client has technology that could predict failures differently than above, based on stress factors on a semiconductors such as heat generation, etc.. And believes their new technology to collect stress factors to predict failures beforehand could produce new service that benefits to those new businesses in the industry, and ultimately benefit the end-users as well. The end-users are the people or consumer who receives the final benefit from the failure prediction service.
 
For example, some of the scenarios you can assume is that;
  • Electric vehicles are becoming more popular.
    • Electric vehicles uses much more electronic components, and failure in these parts could increase risks of human life more than ever.
  • Autonomous and self driving vehicles can become popular.
    • Conventionally, risk aversion of the defective part has been left to the driver. For the upcoming future, there might be no drivers to check and inspect defective parts, but the electronic components itself needs to understand and take appropriate measures to defects. For this, avoiding and predicting failures beforehand becomes much more important.
 
The client is one of the top automotive semiconductor vendor in the world. They will be collecting semiconductor data into the cloud platform and be able to analyze them real-time. Please see reference information section of how this platform is implemented.
The client is looking for the Topcoder community to come up with innovative service ideas and details of these service using the data to predict failures beforehand.

1.2. Task Detail

The task is to come up with new service that is truly innovative and beneficial, making use of failure detection technology. You must clearly describe the service and submit a document explaining your ideas in details.
 
Inside the document, you must provide following:
  1. Since the new failure detection technology is assumed to be used for new emerging business, first you must explain the details of future mobility service provider and its service that is going to use the failure prediction technology. The future mobility service must provide new benefits and values to end-users in the upcoming mobility world.
    1. You should provide the new mobility service detail clearly in 5W1H manner.
    2. You must provide clear use case; what kind of end-user will be using the service and what kind of tools will be used by who, etc. If there are software application involved as a tool, you should provide high level designs for them.
    3. The client assumes that your service idea is for new mobility business in a autonomous automobile environment. However, you may come up with different mobility business than automobiles if it can benefit from semiconductor’s failure prediction technology, such as autonomous drones, trains, or machines in factories, etc.
  2. You must explain details of how the new failure prediction technology can provide benefits and values to this new mobility service.
    1. You must provide details of how the failure prediction technology is used. For example, You must provide application designs and high level system overview.
    2. You should provide the idea that depends on new and trending technology like AI, Deep Learning, Blockchain, AR/VR, or IoT etc. Note that your idea will be scored higher by this.
  3. You must explain details of how the new failure prediction technology can provide benefits for the end-user using the new mobility service.
    1. The client is specifically looking for end-user benefits like safety, price competency or etc, so you must clearly explain it.
    2. If your idea is based on certain end-user market, you should explain its details such as age, gender, region, income or profession etc.
  4. The other details must have following in mind.
    1. You should provide designs or sketches and high-level architecture diagrams to describe your ideas.
    2. The failure detection technology is assumed to be used in the platform described in the 1.3. Reference Information section below.
    3. You should list out and explain details of technologies used in your idea and feasibility of your ideas.

1.3. Reference Information

1.3.1. Overview of automotive semiconductor failure prediction
 

Figure 1.3.1 Failure Rate Curve (Bathtub Curve)
 
Renesas has aligned a number of products already, equipped with a safety mechanism that is representative to ISO 26262 requirements, which is effective as a countermeasure against random failure corresponding to the bottom part of the bathtub curve.
 
Meanwhile, the wear-out failure on the right side of bathtub curve is highly dependent on the environment in which the electrical / electronic equipment is used, and only can be avoided by replacing the parts.
If one can predict failures before reaching such bathtub curve in advance, we can improve the usage by for example rotating to other automobiles and expand the overall time to failure.
The new failure prediction technology is intended to predict these failures before reaching the right side of bathtub curve.
 
The failure prediction technology will be using the wear-out failure risk of electric and electronic components can be predicted from multiple factors like high temperature, voltage exposure, or etc. The following chapter in the document describes the details of these failure factors.
 
https://www.renesas.com/zh-tw/doc/products/others/r51zz0001ej0250.pdf
3.2 Failure Mechanisms Related to the Wafer Process
 
 
1.3.2. Failure prediction platform details
 

 
Above is the high level overview of the platform of the new failure prediction technology.
 
Vehicles such as EV or “Autonomous Car” accumulate "Stress Data" of the vehicle-mounted semiconductor to the cloud "Database" through the "Data Collect Server".
The "Service Server" analyzes these "Stress Data" stored in the cloud "Database" to predict failure or other information, and then to provide specific services (where you should come up with unique idea)  to the "Mobile Devices" based on the obtained information.
 
1.3.3. Future of mobility services environment
 
We have found few links that might be useful to understand the future of mobility services and its world in future. Following is just shown as examples.

2. Examples

Following are several short examples that we have quickly made, so that you can understand what kind of ideas that the client is looking for. These are provided for example purpose only to clarify the goal of this challenge. You must provide much detailed document for your own idea, probably with diagrams and sketches of applications.

2.1. Fleet Management based on remote maintenance solution

2.1.1. Service provider and its services
We assume a future taxi company that uses electric vehicles and self driving vehicle as a service provider.
 
2.1.2. The benefit by failure prediction technology
By knowing the probability of fault occurrence, the service provider can perform a vehicle rotation and preventive replacement of the component based on the failure probability. This will ultimately reduce accidents to happen.
 
2.1.3. The benefit to end-users
Obviously, safety will be ensured by avoiding accidents due to vehicle failure. Also, as service provider can replace parts before failure happens, end-users should be able to benefit from high operational efficiency.
 
2.1.4. Brief example scenario
A Taxi company can use accumulated stress information from the vehicle semiconductor and analyze them to calculate the failure probability. They can use that information to replace electronic parts in advance or use low failure risk cars more than the higher ones.
For example, end user uses smartphone app to get a taxi. Knowing the start point and destination in advance, a taxi company can send a car that is most effective and less risk from a pool of cars effectively.
We can think of few apps for this scenario, end-user app to get a taxi, taxi company’s correspondence system that is connected with the failure prediction technology platform, etc.

2.2. Insurance rate calculation

2.2.1. Service provider and its services
We assume a car insurance company and a company that can manage massive vehicle information.
The company that manages these vehicle information can provide service to determine the probability of accidents or failures to an insurance company or to each vehicles owners.
 
2.2.2. The benefit by failure prediction technology
By quantifying the causality of the vehicle semiconductor stress information and the actual accidents, it will become possible to predict the probability of the accidents.
 
2.2.3. The benefits end-users feel
If the user's vehicle is in good shape, end-users could get discount of insurance premiums.
 
2.2.4. Brief example scenario
Obviously, there would be a system in cloud that connects insurance company, vehicle management companies, and the new failure prediction technology to exchange stress and failure prediction information of vehicles.
Insurance company would become possible to give a discount to vehicle owners based on  the accident occurrence probability.

3. Submission

3.1. Contents

  1. Title : Title of your idea
  2. Description : High level overview / statement of your idea. Consider this part as your sales pitch. Using images, sketches, diagrams are highly encouraged.
  3. Details based on key scenario:
    1. Details of the new Mobility Service
    2. Details of how Failure Prediction Service will bring benefits to the new Mobility Service
    3. Details of benefits it will to the End-Users
    4. Details of technology used behind this scenario
  4. Appendix (optional)

3. 2. Format

  1. A document up to 5 pages (2-3 pages are recommended) in word or PDF format to describe your ideas.
  2. It should be written in English.
  3. Using charts, diagrams and tables to explain your ideas is encouraged from a comprehensive perspective.

4. Judging Criteria

As an ideation challenge, this contest will be judged subjectively by the client and Topcoder. However, the following criteria will largely be the basis for the judgement.
 
The client assumes that your service idea is for new mobility business in an autonomous automobile environment. However, you can come up with different mobility business than automobiles if it can benefit from semiconductor’s failure prediction technology, such as autonomous drones, trains, etc.
 
  1. Completeness, readability, and depth meeting the requirements (40%)
    1. Is your idea capture requirements correctly? Are they comprehensive, detailed and well thought enough?
    2. You must provide much details of how the failure prediction technology is used in your idea, and how that could benefit all the users involved. Give use cases, scenarios, example designs, high level system overview, etc.
    3. Can your idea attract many people as possible and easy to understand? Logically constructed, clear on assumptions you made, and what is your unique idea that could differentiate from other submissions.
  2. Creativity and Innovativity (30%)
    1. Is your idea seen as innovative and creative as no one have thought yet?
  3. Usefulness to end-user ( 15 %)
    1. Can your idea be seen as truly beneficial to the end-user? You will get scored higher if your idea can show clear benefit to convenience and safety in the upcoming mobility world.
  4. Feasibility ( 15 %)
    1. Is your idea feasible and realistic? The surrounding technology and the new mobility service should become realistic within next 5 to 10 years.
    2. Is the application portion of your idea easy to do trial on, and actionable?

Checkpoint

In this challenge, we allow checkpoint submissions. In order to be eligible for a checkpoint prize you must submit to this challenge by April 8 2018 23:00 UTC (19:00 EDT).
 
Any submissions timestamped before then will be eligible and considered in the running for a prize for both the checkpoint and final submission. After this time you will only be eligible for final submission prizes.
 
The advantages of submitting to the checkpoint phase will be to get client feedback on your ideas and the opportunity to receive one of the five $100 checkpoint prizes. We will give you feedback of checkpoint submission until April 11 2018 either generally or some individually. You are not required to submit for the checkpoint in order to submit for the final phase, but we highly encourage you to submit one in order for the client to give feedbacks if any.
In order to qualify for the checkpoint prizes you must submit to the final round.
 
Checkpoint output
  • Title : Title of your idea
  • Description : High level overview / statement of your idea


Final Submission Guidelines

You can submit multiple ideas in a single zip submission. But note that the same member can't win two prizes at the same time.

ELIGIBLE EVENTS:

2018 Topcoder(R) Open

Review style

Final Review

Community Review Board

Approval

User Sign-Off

ID: 30064299