Vehicle control storage methods and systems

• US 10,162,625 B2
• Filed: 04/14/2015
• Issued: 12/25/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 04/14/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ford Global Technologies, LLC (Ford Motor Company)
• Original Assignee: Ford Global Technologies, LLC (Ford Motor Company)
• Inventors: Vangelov, John, Westra, Michael Raymond, Oravec, Joseph Patrick
• Primary Examiner(s): Bui, Hanh Thi-Minh
• Application Number:
  US14/685,970
• Publication Number:
  US 20160306624A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,351 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/654 using techniques specially adapted for alterable solid state memories, e.g. for EEPROM or flash memories
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4401 Bootstrapping security arrangements therefor G06F21/57
• 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
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/34 involving the movement of software or configuration parameters network booting or remote initial program loading [RIPL] G06F9/4416

Abstract

A vehicle can include methods and systems to update controls for a plurality of vehicle systems that operate using updatable controls, wherein each control is mounted in vehicle persistent memory as an image. The controls are stored in non-volatile vehicle memory that has a size less than twice a size of all of the controls loaded thereon. A core system provides access to the control images in the memory.

Claims

1. A vehicle comprising:

a plurality of vehicle systems that operate using a plurality of updatable control applications, wherein each control application is mounted as an image and not as a file;

a non-volatile vehicle memory to store the plurality of updatable control applications having an application memory size less than twice a size of all of the control applications; and

a file control system to provide access to the images in the memory, wherein the memory is updatable on an image basis and not on a file basis within the image,

wherein the control applications include a first group of fixed images that cannot be updated over-the-air and a second group of images that can be updated over-the-air, wherein the non-volatile vehicle memory stores vehicle parameters and consumer data which cannot be updated over-the-air and with the vehicle parameters mirrored across multiple pages of the non-volatile vehicle memory, wherein the first group includes a vehicle parameter image, and wherein the second group includes a plurality of application images.

2. The vehicle of claim 1, wherein the image of each control application is a fixed size of at least one page of the non-volatile vehicle memory and a multiple of pages of the non-volatile vehicle memory.

3. The vehicle of claim 1, wherein the memory is a single partition divided into sub-partitions in which the images are stored and the sub-partitions do not have fixed offsets.

4. The vehicle of claim 1, wherein the file control system tracks images stored on the memory.

5. The vehicle of claim 1, wherein the file control system is configured to error check on an image basis and not on a file basis.

6. The vehicle of claim 5, wherein the file control system is configured to check the file for modification and for a valid digital signature.

7. The vehicle of claim 1, wherein the vehicle memory stores a boot loader and the images are stored at fixed offsets with the boot loader selecting the application image to load.

8. A method for storing controls in a vehicle having a persistent storage with a plurality of images mounted in the storage, comprising:

accessing the images to perform a vehicle device function;

loading an updated image to free memory in the storage to replace a current image executing vehicle functions in hardware, wherein the free memory is less than used memory of the storage with total memory of both the free memory and the used memory being less than twice the size of updatable control applications;

checking the updated image;

in response to the updated image being checked as valid, loading the updated image on next boot of the vehicle;

in response to the updated image passing the updated image check and working in-vehicle after boot, erasing the non-booted current image from storage; and

mounting images that each contain a vehicle control onto the storage, wherein each image is mounted as a separate partition in the storage,

wherein accessing the images includes using logical block addressing to track the images loaded as partitions on the storage.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein accessing the images includes tracking the images using a file system for the persistent storage.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein checking the updated image includes performing a checksum error detection and checking a part number of the updated image.

11. The method of claim 8, wherein loading an updated image includes receiving the updated image over-the-air.

12. The method of claim 8, wherein erasing the non-booted current image includes freeing memory space containing the non-booted current image to a file system that tracks the images on the storage.

13. A vehicle comprising:

persistent flash storage having a plurality of images mounted therein and sized to be less than twice a size of vehicle control application files in the persistent flash storage, wherein each image is mounted as a separate partition in the persistent flash storage; and

one or more processors programmed to access the images to perform a vehicle function, load an updated image to free memory in the persistent flash storage to replace a current image with each updated image having a minimum size of one page of flash storage and a size equal to a multiple of pages of flash storage, check the updated image, in response to the updated image being checked as valid, load the updated image on next boot of the vehicle, and in response to the updated image passing the updated image check and working in-vehicle after boot, erase the non-booted current image from storage, wherein the persistent flash storage is updatable on an image basis and not on a file basis within the image;

wherein accessing the images includes using logical block addressing to track the images loaded as partitions on the persistent flash storage.

14. The vehicle of claim 13, wherein the free memory is less than used memory of the storage.