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Prognosis is used to improve system availability. This is achieved by minimizing system downtime with the help of mechanisms that senses the degradation in the system health to predict the ‘time-to-failure’ of the system. Degradation in the system’s health is measured by sensing the early signs of aging and wear and tear of the system components. This requires knowledge of all the failure modes of the system along with patterns of behavioral changes in the individual components of the system while it continues to age. Prognosis methods and mechanisms are still evolving. So, no comprehensive guidelines or framework standards exist as of today that can provide reliable and standardized prognosis solutions to the end user customers. The intent of devising such a framework and guidelines is to improve and standardize the implementation of prognosis solutions so that; it will be more effective to all stakeholders from the perspective of safety, cost and convenience.

Reliability engineering methods are used to assess risk and eliminate hazards by estimation, elimination, and management of risks of failures. The ISO 26262 functional safety standard gives detailed guidance on reliability engineering methods like Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) [7], Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) [8] [2], and etc. While, there are many methods available for reliability engineering; no single method is foolproof for securing safety by eliminating hazards completely. Out of these methods, FMEA is widely being used as an integral part of the product development life cycle [10]. In this method, failure modes of individual components are analyzed considering one failure at a time. FMEA is an efficient method for analyzing failures in simple systems. For complex systems, FMEA becomes impractical. It is also difficult to consider variables in FMEA.

Displacement joystick controls are considered as most suitable for manual controls wherever proportional outputs are required for dynamic applications such as when variable speed sensitivity or position are required. These joysticks are being used widely in both open loop as well as in close loop controls. The operator applies force to either the joystick itself or to its proportional linear displacement thumb wheel switches. This movement is then detected by either resistive or Hall Effect sensors, placed right inside joystick, and converted into an electrical signal. These joysticks, along with proportional linear displacement thumb wheel switches, find a wide range of applications in off-road vehicles such construction and forestry vehicles, harvester machines, and etc. for applications like attachment speed controls, boom position control, rotation speed control, and etc.

Work lights with high power rating consume high current. Since the battery voltage is fixed, high currents are needed to generate the necessary power (wattage). This makes it difficult to manage the load on the Electronic Control Unit (ECU) responsible for controlling the work lights and also on the entire electrical system of the vehicle. It is possible to prevent the system from getting over loaded by employing effective means of work light control techniques. These techniques differ based on the type of work lights connected on the vehicle. There are three types of work lights available in the market. Halogen work lights, High Intensity Discharge (HID) work lights and Light Emitting Diode (LED) work lights. HIDs are not preferred by most customers due to their high warm up times & cost/unit. The other two types of lights, i.e. LED & Halogen, are comparatively less expensive. They also need negligible warm up times which are not objectionable to the vehicle operators.

Off-road commercial vehicles many times have to work at remote areas in poor working conditions like reduced visibility due to fog, snow, inadequate ambient lighting, dust etc. They may not have any access to emergency facilities in such places. Challenging geographical terrains and adverse weather conditions makes the situation worse. The combination of both can further degrade working conditions. The operator may need to either work or guide his vehicle through tight places or in hilly areas having such conditions. That imposes many challenges to operator in terms of efficiency & safety of both operator & vehicle. In an effort to increase productivity and efficiency operator may miss to look at safety aspects consequently, leading to accidents that can incur heavy losses due to damages to vehicle further delaying the work. It can even lead to a life threatening emergency in some cases.