Enhanced central gateway for vehicle networking

• US 10,140,783 B2
• Filed: 02/15/2017
• Issued: 11/27/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 02/15/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ford Global Technologies, LLC (Ford Motor Company)
• Original Assignee: Ford Global Technologies, LLC (Ford Motor Company)
• Inventors: Thornburg, Douglas B., Stottlemyer, Brett, Watters, Brock, Gabrielli, Nathan, Englert, Richard
• Primary Examiner(s): Sam, Phirin
• Application Number:
  US15/433,401
• Publication Number:
  US 20180232959A1
• Time in Patent Office: 650 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: G07C 5/008 communicating information to a remotely located station transmission systems for measured values G08C
• CPC Class Codes: G07C 5/12 in graphical form
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/40 Bus networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4625 Single bridge functionality, e.g. connection of two networks over a single bridge
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2012/40215 Controller Area Network CAN
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2012/40273 the transportation system being a vehicle
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0686 Additional information in the notification, e.g. enhancement of specific meta-data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0805 by checking availability
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks

Abstract

A central gateway of a vehicle includes a processor and a storage connected to a plurality of vehicle buses. The gateway receives raw data from an electronic control unit (ECU) via one of the vehicle buses, augments the raw data with availability, classification, and context information, publishes the raw data to a publish/subscribe topic hosted to the storage, and subscribes at least a second ECU of the vehicle to the topic. A database of the central gateway is accessed, according to a determined type of raw data received by a central gateway of a vehicle from an electronic control unit (ECU) via a vehicle bus, for augmenting the raw data with availability, classification, and context information. The augmented data is provided to a publish/subscribe topic hosted by the gateway for accessing over a communication network by a service external to the vehicle.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a central gateway of a vehicle, including a processor and a storage, connected to a plurality of vehicle buses, programmed to;

receive raw data from an electronic control unit (ECU) via one of the vehicle buses,

augment the raw data with availability, classification, and context information, publish the raw data to a publish/subscribe topic hosted to the storage,

subscribe at least a second ECU of the vehicle to the topic;

receive second raw data from a second ECU via one of the vehicle buses;

augment the second raw data with availability, classification, and context information; and

publish the second raw data to a second publish/subscribe topic hosted to the storage.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the central gateway is further programmed to

augment the raw data with response information indicating an interface for controlling the ECU,

receive a command from the second ECU to control the ECU,

send a message via the one of the vehicle buses to the ECU to control the ECU.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the vehicle buses include controller area network (CAN) buses and Ethernet buses.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the availability information includes information indicative of power modes, fault modes, and latency of the raw data.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the classification information includes a decode method for the raw data, criteria for identifying errors in the raw data, and data value boundaries of the raw data.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the context information indicates whether the raw data has a human-machine interface (HMI) implication defining whether the data is currently displayed or is of a type of data to be displayed.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the central gateway is further programmed to access a database of the central gateway to identify the availability, classification, and context information according to a determined type of the raw data.

8. A method comprising:

accessing a database, for each of multiple raw data types received by a central vehicle gateway from an electronic control unit (ECU) via a vehicle bus, for augmenting each raw data type with availability, classification, and context information;

providing the augmented data for each raw data type to a corresponding publish/subscribe topic hosted by the gateway for remote accessing over a communication network by a service external to the vehicle.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising connecting the gateway to the service external to the vehicle via a connection manager configured to abstract away which ECU of the vehicle provides an underlying communication channel to the communication network.

10. The method of claim 8, further comprising providing a listing of published topics hosted by the gateway to the service external to the vehicle responsive to a request from the service for the listing.

11. The method of claim 8, further comprising augmenting the raw data with response information indicating an interface for controlling the ECU.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising sending a message via the vehicle bus to the ECU to control the ECU responsive to receiving a command from the service external to the vehicle to control the ECU.

13. The method of claim 8, wherein the vehicle buses is a controller area network (CAN) bus, and the communication network is a wide-area cellular network.

14. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions that, when executed by a processor of a central gateway of a vehicle connected to one or more vehicle buses, cause the processor to:

identify raw data from an electronic control unit connected to one of the vehicle buses responsive to monitoring the one or more vehicle buses for data flows;

determining a data type of the raw data;

accessing a database of the central gateway to identify availability, classification, and context information with which to augment the raw data;

augment the raw data using the availability, classification, and context information to create topic information;

publish the topic information to a publish/subscribe topic hosted by the central gateway;

identify second raw data from a second ECU responsive to monitoring the vehicle bus for data flows;

augment the second raw data with availability, classification, and context information; and

publish a second topic including the second raw data as augmented.

15. The medium of claim 14, further comprising instructions to cause the processor to identify the availability information as including information indicative of power modes, fault modes, and latency of the raw data.

16. The medium of claim 14, further comprising instructions to cause the processor to identify the classification information as including a decode method for the raw data, criteria for identifying errors in the raw data, and data value boundaries of the raw data.

17. The medium of claim 14, further comprising instructions to cause the processor to identify the context information as indicating whether the raw data has a human-machine interface (HMI) implication defining whether the data is currently displayed or is of a type of data to be displayed.

18. The medium of claim 14, further comprising instructions to cause the processor to connect the gateway to a service external to the vehicle via a connection manager configured to abstract away which ECU of the vehicle provides an underlying communication channel to a communication network.