Analysis of Electrostatic Discharge Interference Effects on Small Unmanned Vehicle Handling Systems
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The topic of the paper is chosen properly - the importance of unmanned vehicles will rise in the future.
The paper describes the behavior of the unmanned vehicles during an ESD test according to the standard ISO 10605: 2008.
The paper contains a lot of information - about testing, about results - but there is some important information missing (in my opinion) that makes deciding on achieved results difficult. I have the following questions / recommendations / notes for the authors:
- What vehicle platform was used? Why is it not described in the paper?- -
- Make sense tested the vehicle using the "in car" impedances of the simulator? (It depends on the platform; that is not described…)
- Was the vehicle designed with respect to EMC (not described)?
- There was an issue with some vehicle parts - do these parts meet ESA standards (or other standards)? (Were these parts tested separately? With what result?)
- I'm missing information about testing points - were they chosen properly?
- Could the (outside) operator have touched the vehicle while it was moving (SAFETY!!!)?
- What dimension of coupling plane was used? Does it make sense to use the horizontal coupling plane in this case?
- Occurred the problems with sensors after the first pulses or after the complete test (ten pulses)?
- How long did the LIDAR echo last after ESD exposure? Could be solved the problem by the software (for example comparing the difference between two input maps)?
- If the mm-wave radar was disconnected, was it an HW or SW fault? For example, could the input port be restarted automatically?
- Could be the LIDAR placed to the place with lower intensity of the interference field?
In formal point of view, I have some notes for the authors:
- Why did you use: LIDAR, lidar, LiDAR? Could you unify it, please? And similar:
- Mannequin / Manikin (it is correct?).
- Please use hard space between value and unit.
- Figure 4 – “metal model of human bay in the car”
- Tables with units – according to the standard, correctly is (for example): “Discharge resistance / Ω” or permissible: “Discharge resistance (Ω)”.
- What do you mean (line 222): “…LIDAR can be caused to die and restart at…” If the device died, there is not possible the restart of it (in my mind). Or the device was only disconnected from the system? The same information is at line 257.
- The Figure 9 is really simply and in my mind, it lacks logic in the given context (this simple picture).
Please consider my comments / recommendations and their implementation to the paper.
In my mind, the manuscript must be corrected (added some information) before publishing.
Author Response
Summary of comments and revisions made by the reviewers
Manuscript ID：electronics-2261395
Title: Analysis of electrostatic discharge interference effects in unmanned vehicle systems
Dear Editor and Reviewers:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled ‘Analysis of electrostatic discharge interference effects in unmanned vehicle systems’ (ID: electronics-2261395). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and made corrections which we hope meets with approval. Revised portion is marked in red in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and the response to the reviewer’s comments are as flowing:
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
General Comment: The topic of the paper is chosen properly - the importance of unmanned vehicles will rise in the future. The paper describes the behavior of the unmanned vehicles during an ESD test according to the standard ISO 10605: 2008.
[Response] Thank you very much for taking the time to provide detailed comments and suggestions. We find them very constructive as we approached our revision. We have tried to be responsive to your concerns. We hope you find these revisions rise to your expectations. Once again express my sincere thanks to you. In the following sections, you will find our responses to each of your points and suggestions.
[Comment 1] What vehicle platform was used? Why is it not described in the paper?
[Response] Thanks for raising this important point. We regret that the article dose not specify what vehicle platform was used. Therefore, we have added a description of the vehicle used for the test at the beginning of section 2. (line 88-108)
[Comment 2] Make sense tested the vehicle using the "in car" impedances of the simulator? (It depends on the platform; that is not described…)
[Response] Thank you for carefully and patiently reviewing of our manuscript. We regret that due to the lack of a description of the vehicle platform used previously, it is not possible to see whether it is meaningful to use an ESD model for testing. Therefore, we have added a description of the vehicles used (line 88-108). Although our vehicles currently do not have manned capabilities, as a unmanned vehicle system chassis, further development of manned capabilities may be possible in the future. Therefore, in order to make the experiment comprehensive and rigorous, we still used the vehicle interior detection model.
[Comment 3] Was the vehicle designed with respect to EMC (not described)?
[Response] Thanks for your valuable comments and helpful references. We regret that we have not previously stated in the article whether the design of the vehicle is relevant to EMC. Therefore, based on your suggestion, we describe the EMC situation of the vehicle at the end of section 2 (line 148-158). The test vehicles we use have only passed EMC standards at parts stage, but after forming a system product, system level EMC analysis and testing is performed. This is also the main work of our article.
[Comment 4] There was an issue with some vehicle parts - do these parts meet ESA standards (or other standards)? (Were these parts tested separately? With what result?
[Response] Thank you for carefully and patiently reviewing of our manuscript. Our previous article did lack an introduction to vehicle parts. Therefore, at the end of section 2, we describe the standards that the parts have passed. For details, see Table 1 (line 148-158). These parts have been individually tested and the results are presented in the article. (line 277-323)
[Comment 5] I'm missing information about testing points - were they chosen properly?
[Response] Thank you for carefully and patiently reviewing of our manuscript. Based on your suggestions, we selected the test points according to the ISO 10605 standard and added a description of the test points in section 3.2 of the article. (line 215-229).
[Comment 6] Could the (outside) operator have touched the vehicle while it was moving (SAFETY!!!)?
[Response] We are sorry for our bad grammar. Accordingly, we have not previously described usage scenarios for unmanned vehicle systems. The unmanned vehicle chassis we use can be developed and applied to many fields (logistics and distribution, meal delivery services, business guidance services, etc.), and the driving speed is relatively slow. Therefore, in actual operation, operators may touch the unmanned vehicle system, such as in the field of fast food delivery services, when users accidentally touch the unmanned vehicle while picking up food, or when users click on the screen for human-computer interaction during business guidance···
[Comment 7] What dimension of coupling plane was used? Does it make sense to use the horizontal coupling plane in this case?
[Response] Thank you for carefully and patiently reviewing of our manuscript. The size of the vertical coupling plate we use is 0.5m×0.5m, and the size of the horizontal coupling plate is 1.2m×1.2m. The horizontal coupling plate is mainly used to test unmanned vehicle systems and sensors, mainly simulating electromagnetic interference in the vertical direction of electrostatic discharge in actual use.
[Comment 8] Occurred the problems with sensors after the first pulses or after the complete test (ten pulses)?
[Response] Thanks for raising this important point. Accordingly, we conducted ten discharge tests in accordance with the ISO 10605 standard, and made good grounding treatment. The charges after ten discharges will quickly disappear due to grounding, and there will be no accumulative electric charge. Starting from the first discharge, if the equipment under test does not exhibit significant faults after ten discharges, it indicates that the current discharge voltage cannot cause vehicle faults; on the contrary, it means that the equipment under test cannot work properly. (line 242-251)
[Comment 9] How long did the LIDAR echo last after ESD exposure? Could be solved the problem by the software (for example comparing the difference between two input maps)?
[Response] Thank you very much for taking the time to provide detailed comments and suggestions. We find them very constructive as we approached our revision. The exposure time of the Lidar will continue to increase as the discharge voltage increases. Thank you for giving me suggestions for using software to solve such problems. We believe that software (such as algorithm detection) may solve such problems. However, through our current testing, this work requires a lot of work, as the software is currently unable to effectively identify whether it is due to miss faults caused by electromagnetic interference or rapid changes in the surrounding environment. But next, we will further study this.
[Comment 10] If the mm-wave radar was disconnected, was it an HW or SW fault? For example, could the input port be restarted automatically?
[Response] Millimeter wave radars can experience disconnection faults when they are interfered by electrostatic discharge. After comparative analysis of millimeter wave radars, we found that the disconnection fault was caused by transmission cable issues. (line 286-290，line 346-353)
[Comment 11] Could be the LIDAR placed to the place with lower intensity of the interference field?
[Response] Thank you very much for taking the time to provide detailed comments and suggestions. As far as we know, the laser radar needs to be exposed to the outside in order to work properly. Therefore, the scheme of changing the position to reduce interference is difficult to achieve. However, next, we will further study the protection work of laser radar.
[Comment 12] Why did you use: LIDAR, lidar, LiDAR? Could you unify it, please? And similar:
[Response] Thanks for raising this important point. We have standardized the hardware terminology used in the paper and made revisions to similar issues.
[Comment 13] Mannequin / Manikin (it is correct?).
[Response] Thank you for carefully and patiently reviewing of our manuscript. Accordingly, in response to your questions. Finally, we uniformly changed the four discharge models to“human hand ESD mode in a vehicle”、“human hand ESD mode outside the vehicle”、“human metal ESD model in a vehicle”、“human metal ESD model outside the vehicle”.
[Comment 14] Please use hard space between value and unit.
[Response] Thank you for carefully and patiently reviewing of our manuscript. In the previous version of the article, spaces were missing between values and units. Therefore, in the revised version, we have added spaces between values and units.
[Comment 15] Figure 4 – “metal model of human bay in the car”
[Response] For such issues, we have uniformly revised them to“human hand held metal ESD model in a vehicle”.
[Comment 16] Tables with units – according to the standard, correctly is (for example): “Discharge resistance / Ω” or permissible: “Discharge resistance (Ω)”.
[Response] Thank you for carefully and patiently reviewing of our manuscript. Accordingly, in response to your questions, we have uniformly changed the table unit to“Discharge resistance (Ω)”.
[Comment 17] What do you mean (line 222): “…LIDAR can be caused to die and restart at…” If the device died, there is not possible the restart of it (in my mind). Or the device was only disconnected from the system? The same information is at line 257.
[Response] I'm really sorry, but there was a mistake in our expression. According to your suggestion, we deleted the reboot.
[Comment 18] The Figure 9 is really simply and in my mind, it lacks logic in the given context (this simple picture).
[Response] Thanks for your valuable comments and helpful references. Indeed, without Figure 9, it can be expressed clearly using only text. Therefore, we deleted Figure 9.
We have tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper. Here we did not list the changes but marked in red in revised paper.
We appreciate for Editors and Reviewers’ warm works earnestly, and hope our revision will meet with your approval.
Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
Best regards,
Yours sincerely,
Yongqiang Zhang
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors report an investigation of the susceptibility of an autonomous vehicle of some kind to electrostatic discharge. They determine that a 2kV discharge begins to affect the LIDAR system, and a 4kV discharge begins to affect the mmWave system. The study is straightforward and reasonably well explained, and might have value to the readers. The only information that could be better conveyed is the actual vehicle being studied, which is described by block diagram that makes it difficult for the reader to visualize its layout and the reason for the "large number of metal plates" that apparently contribute to the sensitivity of this system to ESD.
In addition, the English is poor and needs extensive work. Some examples (just three to illustrate the problem) include the sentences:
"Human activity range, it is easy to contact with objects with electrostatic charge or friction charged, where the human body in contact with its potential difference between the object will occur charge transfer, this process is known as electrostatic discharge" (lines 114-116)
"Camera in the whole electrostatic discharge test process no failure occurred." (lines 227-228)
"The use of different electrostatic discharge polarity to the subject was found to be different polarity caused by the subject damage threshold, as shown in ..." (lines 230-234)
(There are many, many more poor sentences.)
Author Response
Summary of comments and revisions made by the reviewers
Manuscript ID：electronics-2261395
Title: Analysis of electrostatic discharge interference effects in unmanned vehicle systems
Dear Editor and Reviewers:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled ‘Analysis of electrostatic discharge interference effects in unmanned vehicle systems’ (ID: electronics-2261395). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and made corrections which we hope meets with approval. Revised portion is marked in red in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and the response to the reviewer’s comments are as flowing:
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
General Comment: The authors report an investigation of the susceptibility of an autonomous vehicle of some kind to electrostatic discharge. They determine that a 2kV discharge begins to affect the LIDAR system, and a 4kV discharge begins to affect the mmWave system. The study is straightforward and reasonably well explained, and might have value to the readers.
[Response] Thank you very much for taking the time to provide detailed comments and suggestions. We find them very constructive as we approached our revision. We have tried to be responsive to your concerns. We hope you find these revisions rise to your expectations. Once again express my sincere thanks to you. In the following sections, you will find our responses to each of your points and suggestions.
[Comment 1] The only information that could be better conveyed is the actual vehicle being studied, which is described by block diagram that makes it difficult for the reader to visualize its layout and the reason for the "large number of metal plates" that apparently contribute to the sensitivity of this system to ESD.
[Response] Thanks for raising this important point. We regret that the article dose not specify what vehicle platform was used. Therefore, we have added a description of the vehicle used for the test at the beginning of section 2 (line 88-108). In addition, metal iron plates are often used for frame support in practical applications of unmanned vehicle systems to increase stability and reduce costs.
[Comment 2] In addition, the English is poor and needs extensive work.
[Response] We are sorry for our bad grammar. Accordingly, we have carefully checked the text for grammatical errors and spelling mistakes . We have strived to make certain improvements in grammar and make sentences in articles more accurately. Thank you very much for your valuable advice.
We have tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper. Here we did not list the changes but marked in red in revised paper.
We appreciate for Editors and Reviewers’ warm works earnestly, and hope our revision will meet with your approval.
Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
Best regards,
Yours sincerely,
Yongqiang Zhang
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The topic of the paper is chosen properly – the importance of unmanned vehicles will rise in the future.
The paper describes the behavior of the unmanned vehicles during an ESD test according to the standard ISO 10605:2008.
The paper contains a lot of information – about testing, about results – but I am not sure, if the whole concept of the unmanned vehicle is properly chosen according to EMC design; the vehicle is composed of components, that probably met only industrial EMC standards – for example the LiDAR met only emission standard EN 61000-6-4, no information about immunity testing or standard (Table 1). A similar situation occurs with the mm-wave radar, which met the CISPR 11 and EN 301 489-1 standards. In my opinion, there is a lack of automotive certification for the components used. Test setup and evaluation is little different for industry and automotive. The test result in this case will probably be unsuccessful. Types of sensors also are not listed.
The illustrative example of the unmanned vehicle shows the case that using of chosen components (for example designed for industry) would be insufficient for this application. I hope that the aim of the authors is to show that the design must also be oriented towards EMC design (using certified components for the application, EMC design rules).
I have some comments to the paper for the authors:
- You presented the illustrative example of the unmanned vehicle – why is not presented in the paper some picture of it? It is confidential? From the picture could be detected some design error…
- Table 1 – What represents the text „In car manikin“? Is the list of standard complete? Why are not described the sensors types? It is confidential?
- Would be the performance criterion achieved for industrial test sufficient for the automotive industry?
- Figure 8 / 9 – it really corresponds with ISO 10605?
- In the Conclusion could be say something like: “please use only certified components and use EMC design rules for an unmanned vehicle”
Please consider my comments and their implementation to the paper.
Author Response
Summary of comments and revisions made by the reviewers
Manuscript ID：electronics-2261395
Title: Analysis of electrostatic discharge interference effects in unmanned vehicle systems
Dear Editor and Reviewers:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled ‘Analysis of electrostatic discharge interference effects in unmanned vehicle systems’ (ID: electronics-2261395). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and made corrections which we hope meets with approval. Revised portion is marked in red in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and the response to the reviewer’s comments are as flowing:
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
When we revised the article, we found that the title of the previous article was ambiguous. Therefore, the title of the article has been revised to read "Analysis of Electrostatic Discharge Interference Effects on Small Unmanned Handling Vehicle Systems."
[Comment 1] You presented the illustrative example of the unmanned vehicle – why is not presented in the paper some picture of it? It is confidential? From the picture could be detected some design error…
[Response] Thank you very much for your keen interest in our manuscript. The previous article lacked the specific model of the vehicle platform used in the test. Therefore, the specific model of the vehicle platform used (XTARK INNOVATION-ATOM) and the physical picture of the product (Figure 2) are added to the article.
[Comment 2] Table 1 – What represents the text “In car manikin“? Is the list of standard complete? Why are not described the sensors types? It is confidential?
[Response] Thank you for carefully and patiently reviewing of our manuscript. We apologize for the typographical error in Table 1, where "In car manikin" was erroneously listed. We have already corrected this mistake. Additionally, the revised version of our submission did not include the complete Table 1, but we have since supplemented it with the relevant testing standards. And added the specific model of the sensor in Table 1.
[Comment 3] Would be the performance criterion achieved for industrial test sufficient for the automotive industry?
[Response] Thanks for your valuable comments and helpful references. To the best of our knowledge, the current EMC standards for Unmanned Handling Vehicle are not complete. We propose the use of more stringent automotive standards to test the electromagnetic compatibility of unmanned vehicles, in order to provide new research ideas for future unmanned vehicle manufacturers or researchers.
[Comment 4] Figure 8 / 9 – it really corresponds with ISO 10605?
[Response] Thank you for carefully and patiently reviewing of our manuscript. We apologize that the ISO 10605 standard does not specify the exact locations for the horizontal and vertical coupling plane discharge test points for the ground equipment. Therefore, based on relevant experience, we have selected representative locations for the test points.
[Comment 5] In the Conclusion could be say something like: “please use only certified components and use EMC design rules for an unmanned vehicle”
[Response] Thank you for carefully and patiently reviewing of our manuscript. Based on your suggestions, we have added relevant content to the conclusion section.(line 436-438).
We have tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper. Here we did not list the changes but marked in red in revised paper.
We appreciate for Editors and Reviewers’ warm works earnestly, and hope our revision will meet with your approval.
Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
Best regards,
Yours sincerely,
Yongqiang Zhang
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
