Method and device for emulating control and/or regulating functions of a control or regulating device

• US 20030171905A1
• Filed: 04/16/2003
• Published: 09/11/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 02/13/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Robert Bosch GmbH
• Original Assignee: Robert Bosch GmbH
• Inventors: Schoneck, Guenter, Breitenbach, Gerda, Wagner, Horst, Stuerzl, Volker
• Granted Patent: US 8,170,860 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 703/13
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 17/02 electric

Abstract

A method and an emulation device (1) are described for emulating control and/or regulating functions of a control or regulating unit (2), in particular of a motor vehicle. For emulation, the functions are swapped out into an external emulation computer (3), a data circuit (9) being produced before the beginning of the emulation via a software interface (12) of the emulation computer (3) and a software interface (13) of the control/regulating unit (2). In order to significantly accelerate the development and programming of new control/regulating functions of the control/regulating unit (2), the software interfaces (12, 13) are configured for the emulation of different control/regulating functions before the beginning of the emulation without changing the software.

Claims

1. A method of emulating control and/or regulating functions of a control or regulating unit (2), in particular of a motor vehicle, by swapping out the functions into an external emulation computer (3), a data circuit (9) being produced before the beginning of the emulation via a software interface (12) of the emulation computer (3) and a software interface (13) of the control/regulating unit (2), wherein the software interfaces (12, 13) are configured for the emulation of different control/regulating functions before the beginning of the emulation without changing the software.

2. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the software interfaces (12, 13) are configured for the emulation of different control/regulating functions from a preselectable set of measured and intervention variables.

3. The method as recited in claim 2, wherein the resources for the data circuit (9) and the resources of a read/write memory (6) of the control/regulating unit (2) are dynamically managed in accordance with the interface configurations.

4. The method as recited in one of claims 1 through 3, wherein the configuration is defined on the emulation computer (3) and the configuration data is transmitted to the control/regulating unit (2) via the data circuit (9) before the beginning of the emulation.

5. The method as recited in claim 4, wherein the configuration data is transmitted to the control/regulating unit (2) during an initialization phase of the emulation computer (3).

8. A memory element (4), in particular a read-only memory, random access memory, or flash memory, for a control or regulating unit (2) of a motor vehicle, on which a computer program is stored, which is executable on a computing element, in particular on a microprocessor (5), and is suitable for carrying out a method as recited in one of claims 1 through 5.

9. A computer program, wherein it is suitable for carrying out a method as recited in one of claims 1 through 5 when it runs on a computing element, in particular on a microprocessor (5).

10. The computer program as recited in claim 9, wherein it is stored on a memory element (4), in particular on a flash memory.

6. An emulation device (1), comprising a control or regulating unit (2), in particular of a motor vehicle, and an external emulation computer (3), the emulation device (1) being used for emulating control and/or regulating functions of the control/regulating unit (2) by swapping out the functions into the emulation computer (3), the control/regulating unit (2) having a software interface (13) and the emulation computer (3) having a software interface (12), and the control/regulating unit (2) and the emulation computer (3) being linked to one another via a data circuit (9) which may be produced via the software interfaces (12, 13) before the beginning of the emulation, wherein the software interfaces (12, 13) are configurable for the emulation of different control/regulating functions before the beginning of the emulation, without changing the software.

7. The emulation device (1) as recited in claim 6, wherein the data circuit (9) is implemented as a serial bus system, in particular as a controller area network (CAN) bus.