Display systems may broadly include emissive displays and non-emissive displays. An emissive display refers to a display capable of producing an image directly without requiring a backlight. Research in field emission displays, for example, provide various exemplary types of emissive displays. Other types of displays, such as light-emitting diode (LED) displays, organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays, surface-conduction electron-emitter displays (SEDs) and the like, may also be generally referred to as emissive displays. A non-emissive display, on the other hand, refers to a display that requires a light source. Light modulating display devices, such as liquid crystal displays (LCDs), for example, are non-emissive displays.
A “fail-operational” system refers to a system that can continue to operate even after a failure has occurred. Operation after failure is required for many aircraft systems, including display systems for delivering critical primary flight information. A conventional implementation of an aircraft display system typically includes multiple displays horizontally positioned across an instrument panel. These displays are secured to fixed locations and cannot be repositioned. Some of the adjacent displays may have abilities to enter a reversionary mode and serve as a backup to a primary display in case of a primary display failure. The ability for an adjacent display to enter a reversionary mode may allow a pilot to maintain aircraft control and proceed in a degraded state.
It is noted, however, that the location of the adjacent display (now serving as a backup to the primary display) is sub-optimal compared to the location of the primary display. Using a backup display located at a sub-optimal location has several disadvantages. For instance, relocation of the primary flight information on the instrument panel may impact pilot's cross-check habit patterns and may result in extended visual search during periods of high workload. The pilot may also be required to perform additional actions in order to view detailed system information due to the display being used in the reversionary mode. In addition, the need for having to equip an instrument panel with multiple displays (so that adjacent displays can serve as backups) may contribute to added weight and excessive instrument panel clutter. Furthermore, a display that may serve as a backup display needs to be configured in a manner that can maintain readability across an extended field of view, resulting in the need for additional power or added unit cost.
It is also noted that recent development in flight deck designs are increasingly dependent on single large displays. There may not be an adjacent display available that is capable of serving as a backup to a single large display, and it may therefore be essential to design such a single large display to be fail-operational.
In one aspect, embodiments of the inventive concepts disclosed herein are directed to a display device. The display device may include: at least one set of light-emitting elements; at least two redundant sets of control circuits configured to control the at least one set of light-emitting elements; and a controller in communication with the at least two redundant sets of control circuits. The controller may be configured to: disable a first set of the at least two redundant sets of control circuits from controlling the at least one set of light-emitting elements; and enable a second set of the at least two redundant sets of control circuits to control the at least one set of light-emitting elements.
In a further aspect, embodiments of the inventive concepts disclosed herein are directed to a display device. The display device may include at least two sets of light-emitting elements jointly forming a display panel, the at least two sets of light-emitting elements including a first set of light-emitting elements and a second set of light-emitting elements, wherein the first set of light-emitting elements and the second set of light-emitting elements are interleaved across the display panel. The display device may also include a set of control circuits dedicated for each particular set of the at least two sets of light-emitting elements, wherein the set of control circuits dedicated for each particular set of light-emitting elements is configured to provide controls specific to that particular set of light-emitting elements.
In another aspect, embodiments of the inventive concepts disclosed herein are directed to a display device. The display device may include a first set of light-emitting elements and a second set of light-emitting elements jointly forming a display panel, wherein the first set of light-emitting elements and the second set of light-emitting elements are interleaved across the display panel. The display device may also include a first set of control circuits dedicated to control the first set of light-emitting elements and a second set of control circuits dedicated to control the second set of light-emitting elements. The display device may further include a controller in communication with the first and second sets of control circuits. The controller may be configured to selectively enable or disable at least one of the first and the second sets of control circuits.
It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory only and are not restrictive of the inventive concepts disclosed and claimed herein. The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of the specification, illustrate embodiments of the inventive concepts and together with the general description, serve to explain the principles and features of the inventive concepts disclosed herein.
The numerous objects and advantages of the inventive concepts disclosed herein may be better understood by those skilled in the art by reference to the accompanying figures in which:
Reference will now be made in detail to exemplary embodiments of the inventive concepts disclosed herein, examples of which are illustrated in the accompanying drawings.
Embodiments in accordance with the inventive concepts disclosed herein are directed to fail-operational display systems and methods for controlling such fail-operational display systems. More specifically, emissive displays having independently addressable (controllable) light emitting elements fitted with redundant control circuits may be utilized as fail-operational display systems.
Referring to
As shown in
It is further noted that both drive circuits 108A and 108B may be utilized to address the same set of light-emitting elements 102. The drive circuits 108A and 108B may be interleaved (or interlaced) with respect to rows and/or columns of the light-emitting elements 102. As will be described in more details below, the drive circuits 108A and 108B interleaved in this manner may reduce the perceived impact of a failure, and even the worst case failure condition (e.g., if one of the drive circuits 108A or 108B fails completely) may be fully recovered, allowing the display device 100 to maintain its operations over the entire display panel 104 even under such failure conditions.
For instance, in certain implementations, one set of control circuits (e.g., the drive circuits 108A and the source and gate control line driver 106A) may be utilized to drive the light-emitting elements 102 while the other set of control circuits (e.g., the drive circuits 108B and the source and gate control line driver 106B) may remain inactive or unpowered. Following a detected failure in the drive circuits 108A and/or the source and gate control line driver 106A, the drive circuits 108A and the source and gate control line driver 106A may be disabled/inactivated and the drive circuits 108B and the source and gate control line driver 106B may be enabled/activated to take over the control of the light-emitting elements 102. The redundancy provided in this manner allows the display device 100 to remain fully operational even when one of the drive circuits 108A/108B and/or one of the source and gate control line drivers 106A/106B fail partially or completely.
It is contemplated that various techniques may be utilized to detect the failures that may occur. For instance, failure detection may be performed utilizing an external electrical monitoring circuitry that monitors the health of the drive circuits 108A and 108B as well as the source and gate control line drivers 106A and 106B. Alternatively and/or additionally, one or more optical/image sensors may be utilized to observe whether a failure has occurred based on optical observations of the display device 100. The user may also be provided with an option to manually specify a user-observed failure. Once a failure is detected, the failure may be reported to a controller 120 that is in communication with the source and gate control line drivers 106A and 106B, and the controller 120 may conditionally disable/enable one of the source and gate control line drivers 106A or 106B and their corresponding drive circuits 108A or 108B as described above.
Alternatively and/or additionally, the controller 120 may periodically switch between the two sets of control circuits 106A/108A and 106B/108B according to a predetermined schedule, allowing them to take turns to actively control the light-emitting elements 102. It is noted that periodically switching between the two sets of control circuits 106A/108A and 106B/108B may help reduce operational fatigue and improve reliability and life of both sets.
It is contemplated that the controller 120 may include one or more processors, which may be coupled with non-transitory processor readable media storing processor-executable code configured to cause the processor to carry out its intended functions. It is to be understood that the controller 120 may be implemented as integrated circuits, dedicated processing units, field-programmable gate arrays, or various other types of processors or processing units without departing from the broad scope of the inventive concepts disclosed herein.
It is also contemplated that additional transistors and/or other switching devices may be utilized to further enhance isolation between the two sets of control circuits.
More specifically, as shown in
It is to be understood that while the display device 100 is shown to have two sets of control circuits 106A/108A and 106B/108B, additional sets of control circuits may be provided in similar manners without departing from the broad scope of the inventive concepts disclosed herein. Providing additional sets of control circuits helps to provide additional levels of redundancy. It is contemplated that the specific level of redundancy may be determined based on various factors, including cost, complexity, criticality, dimension, and/or other considerations.
It is further contemplated that in addition to providing redundant control circuits as described above, redundant light-emitting elements may also be provided in certain implementations to provide additional redundancy.
More specifically, as shown in
In certain implementations, each pair of adjacent light-emitting elements 302A and 302B may jointly operate as a logical light-emitting unit (e.g., logically forming a single pixel for display purposes), and both sets of light-emitting elements 302A and 302B may be driven by their corresponding control circuits 306A/308A and 306B/308B simultaneously. In this manner, if one light-emitting element (e.g., 302A) fails, the other light-emitting element (e.g., 302B) within the same pair may continue to operate without losing that pixel. In addition, if an entire set of light-emitting elements (e.g., all light-emitting elements 302A) were to fail, the display device 300 may still remain fully operational because the other set of light-emitting elements (e.g., light-emitting elements 302B) may still remain fully operational. Similarly, if one of the drive circuits (e.g., 308A) and/or one of the source and gate control line driver (e.g., 306A) were to fail partially or completely, the display device 300 may still maintain its operations because the remaining set of drive circuits (e.g., 308B) and source and gate control line driver (e.g., 306B) may continue to drive the light-emitting elements 302B to keep the display device 300 fully operational.
Alternatively, in certain implementations, adjacent light-emitting elements 302A and 302B are not required to operate as logical light-emitting units, but as individual pixels instead. Both sets of light-emitting elements 302A and 302B may still be engaged and driven by their corresponding control circuits 306A/308A and 306B/308B simultaneously, and if one set of light-emitting elements (e.g., 302A) fails, the remaining set of light-emitting elements (e.g., 302B) may continue to operate, but effectively providing a display panel that has a lower resolution (due to loss of pixels). It is noted that while the effective resolution may be lowered in such implementations, the display device 300 is nonetheless made fail-operational.
It is also noted that in either implementations, loss of light-emitting elements may lead to loss of perceived brightness of the display device 300. An optional implementation to compensate for this loss is to drive the remaining light-emitting elements at a higher level (to increase the perceived brightness). While this optional implementation may be desirable in certain situations, it is to be understood that whether to provide this optional implementation may be device specific and may vary without departing from the broad scope of the inventive concepts disclosed herein.
Alternatively, instead of simultaneously engaging both sets of light-emitting elements 302A and 302B, one of the sets 302A or 302B may be disengaged (e.g., turned off by the controller 320) to save power and may be automatically engaged in case of a failure detected in the other set. The controller 320 may also periodically switch between the two sets of light-emitting elements 302A and 302B to reduce operational fatigue. Further, it is to be understood that having two sets of light-emitting elements 302A and 302B may provide other advantages in addition to providing redundancy as described above. For instance, the controller 320 may use the two sets of light-emitting elements 302A and 302B to display separate display components during normal operations. That is, one of the sets (e.g., 302A) may be used to display lower intensity large area fill graphics items while the other set (e.g., 302B) may be used to display higher intensity vector graphics components. Such a configuration may be beneficial and may prevent higher intensity graphics from burning into the lower intensity regions. In the event of a failure, however, the separation between higher and lower intensity graphics may be disregarded and redundancy may be provided in manners previously described.
In another example, the two sets of light-emitting elements 302A and 302B may be configured to provide different levels of light-emitting configurations. For instance, one set of light-emitting elements (e.g., 302A) may include light-emitting elements that are larger and/or brighter than the other set of light-emitting elements (e.g., 302B). Such a configuration may allow the apparent brightness of various elements displayed on the display panel 304 to be adjustable by selectively activating one or both sets of light-emitting elements 302A and 302B. For example, the smaller emitters (e.g., 302B) may be used to display dim graphics elements, the larger emitters (e.g., 302A) may be used to display brighter elements, and both emitters (e.g., 302B and 302A) may be used together to display even brighter elements. It is to be understood that utilizing light-emitting elements of different levels of light-emitting configurations may also be utilized in conjunction with the optional implementation previously described to compensate for loss of perceived brightness, and may provide other advantages without departing from the broad scope of the inventive concepts disclosed herein.
It is to be understood that while the display device 300 is shown to have two sets of control circuits 306A/308A and 306B/308B and two sets of light-emitting elements 302A and 302B, additional sets of control circuits and light-emitting elements may be provided in similar manners without departing from the broad scope of the inventive concepts disclosed herein. Similarly, as previously mentioned, various techniques may be utilized to detect the failures that may occur, including utilization of external electrical monitoring circuitry, optical sensors, user monitoring and the like.
It is contemplated that the various implementations of redundant control circuits and/or redundant light-emitting elements described above may be scaled and adapted to fit various types of display devices of various sizes. The various implementations may also be combined without departing from the broad scope of the inventive concepts disclosed herein. It is also contemplated that an exemplary display device configured in accordance with the inventive concepts disclosed herein may be implemented on a rigid or a flexible substrate, which may range from substantially opaque to substantially transparent, depending on specific operational requirement of the display device. It is further contemplated that the light-emitting elements referenced above may utilize various types of light emitters, including LEDs, OLEDs, SEDs, as well as other types of emitters without departing from the broad scope of the inventive concepts disclosed herein.
It is further contemplated that while the examples depicted in the illustrations above referenced an N=2 redundancy, the level of redundancy (N) may be increased by providing additional redundant control circuits and/or redundant light-emitting elements without departing from the broad scope of the inventive concepts disclosed herein. It is to be understood that increasing the level of redundancy (N) may reduce the amount of display functionality lost under worst case failure conditions at the expense of increased complexity, and the specific choice of the level of redundancy (N) may be implementation specific and may vary without departing from the broad scope of the inventive concepts disclosed herein.
Furthermore, it is contemplated that interleaving of the redundant control circuits and/or redundant light-emitting elements may be implemented vertically and/or horizontally with respect to the orientation of the display panels shown in
It is also contemplated that the interleaving factor i may be independently selected and may differ for the vertical and/or horizontal directions. For example, an implementation may have a vertical interleaving factor of i_v and a different horizontal interleaving factor of i_h. In another example, one of the vertical or horizontal directions may be implemented without interleaving, and it is noted that specific implementations may vary based on details of the desired redundancy requirements without departing from the broad scope of the inventive concepts disclosed herein.
It is to be understood that while aircraft display systems are referenced in the examples above, such references are merely exemplary. Display devices in accordance with the inventive concepts disclosed herein may be applicable to various types of displays, including displays mounted to vehicles (e.g., land, maritime, air, and space vehicles), portable displays (e.g., wearables, phones, head mounted, tablets, personal electronics, and the like), computer displays, television displays, as well as various other types of displays. It is also contemplated that in certain implementations, the display devices may be configured to support three-dimensional (3D) viewing; however, it is to be understood that 3D viewing capabilities are not required.
It is to be understood that embodiments of the inventive concepts described in the present disclosure are not limited to any underlying implementing technology. Embodiments of the inventive concepts of the present disclosure may be implemented utilizing any combination of software and hardware technology and by using a variety of technologies without departing from the broad scope of the inventive concepts or without sacrificing all of their material advantages.
It is believed that the inventive concepts disclosed herein and many of their attendant advantages will be understood by the foregoing description, and it will be apparent that various changes may be made in the form, construction, and arrangement of the components thereof without departing from the broad scope of the inventive concepts or without sacrificing all of their material advantages. The form herein before described being merely an explanatory embodiment thereof, it is the intention of the following claims to encompass and include such changes.
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