Patent ID: 8078429

Claim:
A process for diagnosing a problem in a motor vehicle, the vehicle having a plurality of subsystems, each of the plurality of subsystems having one or more components that participate in the operation of the vehicle by performing one or more vehicle operations, each of the plurality of subsystems also having one or more sensors that detect the one or more vehicle operations and transmit data related thereto, the process comprising: providing a multi-agent network having an adaptive global agent located in a central facility, a vehicle expert agent located in the vehicle and a plurality of subsystem resident agents, each of said plurality of subsystem resident agents assigned to one of the plurality of subsystems of the vehicle; providing a diagnosis agent operable to be instructed by said adaptive global agent, transmitted to said vehicle expert agent, received by said vehicle expert agent, transmitted by said vehicle expert agent and received by said adaptive global agent; instructing the diagnosis agent to instruct the vehicle expert agent to perform an unstructured task; transmitting the diagnosis agent from the central facility to the vehicle expert agent, the vehicle expert agent receiving the diagnosis agent; instructing the vehicle expert agent to perform the unstructured task and obtain a result, the vehicle expert agent performing the unstructured task and obtaining a result; reporting the result to the diagnosis agent; transmitting the diagnosis agent with the result from the vehicle expert agent to the central facility; and analyzing the result from the vehicle expert agent with the adaptive global agent, whereby a problem in the vehicle is diagnosed.