CONNECTIONLESS COMMUNICATION WITH INTERIOR VEHICLE COMPONENTS

• US 20170305371A1
• Filed: 04/25/2016
• Published: 10/26/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 04/25/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ford Global Technologies, LLC (Ford Motor Company)
• Original Assignee: Ford Global Technologies, LLC (Ford Motor Company)
• Inventors: BUTTOLO, Pietro, RANKIN, II, James Stewart, TOKISH, Stephen Ronald, WALLACE, Jeffrey A., SALTER, Stuart C.
• Granted Patent: US 9,914,415 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: B60R 16/03 for supply of electrical power to vehicle subsystems or for circuit arrangements for charging batteries H02J7/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0481 based on specific properties of the displayed interaction object or a metaphor-based environment, e.g. interaction with desktop elements like windows or icons, or assisted by a cursor's changing behaviour or appearance
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0484 for the control of specific functions or operations, e.g. selecting or manipulating an object, an image or a displayed text element, setting a parameter value or selecting a range
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/80 Services using short range communication, e.g. near-field communication [NFC], radio-frequency identification [RFID] or low energy communication
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 8/005 Discovery of network devices, e.g. terminals

Abstract

A vehicle component may operate in a plurality of connectionless functional states including a watchdog state in which the component broadcasts advertisements indicating presence of the vehicle component to personal devices; a notify state in which the component broadcasts cycles of advertisements indicating available features of the component; and a process command state in which the component broadcasts current feature state advertisements responsive to command advertisements received from the personal devices. A personal device may operate in a plurality of connectionless functional states including an acquire interface state in which the personal device collects information indicative of component functions based on non-connectable advertisements from in-vehicle components; a display interface state in which the personal device provides a user interface of controls based on information collected during the acquire interface state; and a process command state in which the device broadcasts command advertisements responsive to operator input to the user interface.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a wireless transceiver; and

a processor, in communication with the transceiver, programmed to;

filter non-connectable advertisements to exclude advertisements lacking a predefined identifier unique to in-vehicle components,

generate a user interface of controls based on information collected from the filtered advertisements, and

broadcast a command advertisement to the in-vehicle components responsive to operator input adjusting a component function using one of the controls.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein each control of the user interface relates to an in-vehicle component function and is defined according to one of a sequence of advertisements received by the transceiver from the in-vehicle components.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the processor is further programmed to:

broadcast a request for graphical information to the in-vehicle components; and

responsive to the request, receive from the in-vehicle components advertisements including vertex information defining graphics to display in the user interface descriptive of the component functions.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the non-connectable advertisements include BLUETOOTH Generic Access Profile (GAP) payload information.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the command advertisement includes a bit field in which each bit of the bit field represents a different seating zone of a vehicle, and the processor is further programmed to encode an indication of which of the seating zones of the vehicle are to be controlled by the command using the bit field.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein each of the filtered advertisements includes a bit field in which each bit of the bit field represents a different seating zone of a vehicle, and the processor is further programmed to generate the user interface of controls accounting for which of the seating zones of the vehicle are to be controlled by the component function.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein each of the advertisements includes a data descriptor field located at a predefined location in the advertisement and defining a type of the advertisement, each type corresponding to a predefined format of data included in the advertisement.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein a predefined bit of the data descriptor field is set to indicate that the corresponding in-vehicle component requires authentication of a sender of the command advertisement before the command advertisement.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein each of the advertisements includes a smart module identifier field including the predefined identifier at a predefined position within the advertisement.

10. A system comprising:

a vehicle component configured to operate in a plurality of connectionless functional states including;

a watchdog state in which the component broadcasts advertisements indicating presence of the vehicle component to personal devices;

a notify state in which the component broadcasts cycles of advertisements indicating available features of the component; and

a process command state in which the component broadcasts current feature state advertisements responsive to command advertisements received from the personal devices.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the advertisements include a data descriptor field located at a predefined location in the advertisement and defining a type of the advertisement, each type corresponding to a predefined format of data included in the advertisement.

12. The system of claim 10, wherein the command advertisements include a bit field in which each bit of the bit field represents a different seating zone of a vehicle, such that the command advertisements encode indications of which of the seating zones of the vehicle are to be controlled by the command using the bit field.

13. The system of claim 10, wherein the advertisements include an attribute flag configured to indicate which functional states are supported by the vehicle component.

14. The system of claim 10, wherein the vehicle component is programmed to transition from the notify state to the process command state responsive to receiving the command advertisements from the personal devices, and transition from the process command state to the notify state responsive to expiration of a predefined timeout.

15. The system of claim 10, wherein the vehicle component is further configured to operate in a send interface state, and the vehicle component is programmed to transition from the notify state to the send interface state responsive to detection of an advertisement from a personal device requesting interface details of the component, and transition from the send interface state to the notify state responsive to completion of sending the interface details.

16. A system comprising:

a personal device configured to operate in a plurality of connectionless functional states including;

an acquire interface state in which the personal device collects information indicative of component functions based on non-connectable advertisements from in-vehicle components;

a display interface state in which the personal device provides a user interface of controls based on information collected during the acquire interface state; and

a process command state in which the personal device broadcasts command advertisements responsive to operator input to the user interface.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the personal device is programmed to transition from the acquire interface state to the display interface state responsive to a determination that the information indicative of component functions is collected.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein the personal device is programmed to transition from the display interface state to the process commands state responsive to the operator input to the user interface.

19. The system of claim 16, wherein the personal device is programmed to transition from the process commands state to the display interface state responsive to expiration of a predefined timeout value.

20. The system of claim 16, wherein the personal device is further configured to operate in a dormant state, and personal device is programmed to transition from the dormant state to the acquire interface state responsive to detection of an advertisement from one of the in-vehicle components.