Patent 7185230 was granted and assigned to Siemens Aktiengesellschaft on February, 2007 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A method for monitoring a driver output has is provision for actively influencing the driver output in order to perform fault analysis. To avoid a component addressed by the driver being influenced as a result of the active influencing of the driver output although no fault or only a sporadic fault has occurred, provision is made in accordance with the invention for active influencing of the driver output only to occur when a fault state has occurred at the driver output for a specified period of time.