Updating a controller unit in a vehicle

• US 10,114,634 B2
• Filed: 02/10/2017
• Issued: 10/30/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 01/22/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Blackberry Limited
• Original Assignee: 2236008 Ontario Inc. (Blackberry Limited)
• Inventors: Quin, Spencer Leavitt George, Travers, Christopher Scott, Streatch, Paul, Maclean, Roger Francis
• Primary Examiner(s): Lee, Marina
• Application Number:
  US15/429,379
• Publication Number:
  US 20170212746A1
• Time in Patent Office: 627 Days
• Field of Search: 717169
• CPC Class Codes: B60R 16/02 electric constitutive elements
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/65 Updates security arrangements therefor G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/123 received data contents, e.g. message integrity
• 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
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/44 for communication between vehicles and infrastructures, e.g. vehicle-to-cloud [V2C] or vehicle-to-home [V2H]

Abstract

In some examples, a service receives releases including machine-readable instructions from different vendors, the releases for respective controller units of a vehicle. The service communicates the releases wirelessly to the vehicle to update machine-readable instructions executing on the respective controller units of the vehicle.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving, by a service, releases comprising machine-readable instructions from different vendors, the releases for respective controller units of a vehicle;

presenting, by the service, a console accessible by the vendors to provide the releases to the service; and

communicating, by the service, the releases wirelessly to the vehicle to update machine-readable instructions executing on the respective controller units of the vehicle.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the console comprises a user interface (UI) console that is accessible by vendor systems associated with the vendors.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

providing, using the UI console, an update package from a first vendor system to the service.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

presenting, by the UI console, a web page accessible by the first vendor system.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

collecting, by the service, a profile of the vehicle, the profile including information relating to components of the vehicle that are in communication with an update gateway of the vehicle.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the profile includes information relating to the controller units and installed releases of the machine-readable instructions executing on the controller units.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein the profile includes information relating to an identity of a wireless network over which the vehicle is communicating.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving, by the service, information regarding a status relating to the update of the machine-readable instructions, the status selected from among success, failure, partial failure, rollback, and retry.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

indicating, by the service in response to the information regarding the status relating to the update of the machine-readable instructions, a problem with an update using a given release of the releases.

10. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

determining, by the service in response to the information regarding the status relating to the update of the machine-readable instructions, a cause of a problem relating to an update using a given release of the releases.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

requesting, by the service, further information from the vehicle to determine the cause of the problem relating to the update using the given release.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving, by the service, a result of a dependency check between the controller units of the vehicle, wherein the result of the dependency check indicates a dependency between first and second controller units of the controller units of the vehicle.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

using, by the service, the result of the dependency check to determine an issue with respect to an interaction between controller units of the vehicle, after the update of the machine-readable instructions has been performed at the vehicle.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the releases are associated with metadata specifying a manner and time for downloading each release of the releases to the vehicle.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the metadata specifies that a download of a release of the releases is to a group of vehicles that share at least one property.

16. The method of claim 14, wherein a given release of the releases is created at a back-office system of a respective vendor of the different vendors.

17. The method of claim 1, wherein the controller units of the vehicle are provided by the different vendors.

18. A vehicle comprising:

controller units from different vendors to perform respective tasks in the vehicle; and

a processor; and

a non-transitory storage medium storing instructions executable on the processor to;

communicate with a remote service over a wireless network, the communicating including receiving update packages from the different vendors for the controller units,

perform a dependency check between the controller units of the vehicle;

send a result of the dependency check to the remote service; and

cause installation of the received update packages to update machine-readable instructions executable on the controller units.

19. The vehicle of claim 18, wherein the result of the dependency check indicates a dependency between first and second controller units of the controller units of the vehicle, wherein the dependency comprises a dependency of an operation of the first controller unit based on an operation of the second controller unit.

20. The vehicle of claim 19, wherein the instructions are executable on the processor to use the result of the dependency check when installing the received update packages.

21. The vehicle of claim 18, wherein the instructions are executable on the processor to install a given update package of the update packages by one or both of:

communicating the given update package to a third party installer service to install the given update package on a respective controller unit, wherein the third party installer service manages installation of update packages of a collection of the controller units, and

directly installing the given update package of the update packages on the respective controller unit.

22. The vehicle of claim 21, wherein the instructions are executable on the processor to cause installation of content, configuration information, or calibration information to a non-controller unit component.

23. The vehicle of claim 21, wherein the instructions or the installer service are to collect a status or progress of installation of the given update package, and to send a report including the status or progress to the remote service.

24. The vehicle of claim 21, wherein the instructions or the installer service are to check an integrity of each respective update package of the update packages by verifying a signature of the respective update package.

25. The vehicle of claim 18, wherein communication of the update packages to the controller units is over a bus and is protected by a security protocol.

26. The vehicle of claim 21, wherein the instructions or the installer service are to cause installation of the update packages for a subset of the controller units such that the update packages for the subset are all installed or none are installed.

27. A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium storing instructions that upon execution cause at least one processor to:

receive releases comprising machine-readable instructions from different vendors, the releases for respective controller units provided by the different vendors, the controller units being part of one vehicle;

present a console accessible by the different vendors to provide the releases to the service for installation in the one vehicle; and

communicate the releases wirelessly over a wireless network to the one vehicle to update machine-readable instructions executing on the respective controller units of the one vehicle.