Data processing: vehicles – navigation – and relative location – Vehicle control – guidance – operation – or indication
Reexamination Certificate
2000-03-02
2003-01-07
Cuchlinski, Jr., William A. (Department: 3661)
Data processing: vehicles, navigation, and relative location
Vehicle control, guidance, operation, or indication
C701S036000, C701S024000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06505100
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND AND SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
This application claims the priority of German patent document 199 09 157.9, filed Mar. 2, 1999, the disclosure of which is expressly incorporated by reference herein.
The invention relates to a distributed vehicle information processing and vehicle control system, having at least two system parts as network nodes which communicate via a data transmission network, and at least one of which is arranged on the vehicle side.
Overall, such systems are used for carrying out vehicle-related applications of widely varying types, for example in conjunction with user interfaces, internal and external communication, application support and with the actual applications and services themselves. The latter includes, for example, actuation of vehicle units, evaluation of vehicle sensor information and general services such as navigation, diagnosis, anti-theft devices and data interchange with remote network nodes, for example via the Internet.
Modern vehicle systems are distinguished by a data processing element that is becoming ever larger; that is to say telematics applications are becoming increasingly important. For example, breakdown services and dynamic navigation services as well as Internet-based applications demand the implementation of distributed systems, in which the vehicle is no longer regarded as an isolated individual system, but as an active node in a distributed data communications system, preferably with a worldwide range. System applications implemented aboard the vehicle will in this case in general carry out not only client functions but also server functions.
The layering of functionalities that are required for a vehicle system has already been proposed for a vehicle communications system disclosed in German Patent Document DE 196 25 002 A1, which uses adaptive application control, and allows a certain amount of variability in the assignment of the applications to various interfaces and appliance units on the vehicle side.
In the field of general data processing, a component-based system design has recently been proposed as an alternative to central system architectures. See, for example, the Journal article D. Kiely, “Are Components—The Future of Software?”, IEEE Computer Magazine, page 10, February 1998. In this case, the function to be provided by the overall system is broken down into individual functional units (“components”), which then provide the overall desired function by suitable linking and communication with one another. Such breakdown into components on the one hand simplifies their reuse and the design of complex systems from these components, and on the other hand simplifies the production of robust components themselves (since they need be equipped with only a limited, clear functional scope). The components are characterized by their external identical architecture, which makes it possible to link them to one another in a simple manner, such that the function provided by a particular component may initially be viewed independently of this architecture.
The explosive growth in the Internet and the Worldwide Web has led to distributed systems becoming increasingly important. To simplify the implementation of such systems, and to allow component-based systems to be provided, an increasing number of distributed object models have been established. The system developers are also making ever greater use of Internet-oriented solutions for these object models and are implementing them, for example, using Java RMI or “Java Beans”. See the corresponding Internet information from Sun Microsystems with DCOM from Microsoft; see also, the publications T. Albertson, “Best Practices in Distributed Object Application Development: RMI, CORBA and DCOM, February 1998, Internet page “http://developer.com
ews/techfocus/022398_distl.htm” and P. E. Chung et al., “DCOM and CORBA Side by Side, Step by Step, and Layer by Layer, September 1997, Internet page “http://www.cs.wustl.edu/≈schmitt/submit/Paper.html”, or, on the basis of CORBA, see also A. Vogel, K. Duddy, “Java Programming with CORBA”, John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
As is evident from the cited literature, the trend towards object-oriented component models can be explained by the following advantages: first, by the capability for reuse of existing algorithms and software, and for “rapid prototyping” of applications by “plug-and-play” interaction of the components; second, mutually independent development and implementation of components; third efficient code maintenance including the systematic distribution of updates; and fourth “lightweight” and “thin clients” implementations, which communicate with infrastructure-based systems, which can be localized there at various points.
One of the characteristic features of such components is that they follow a standard architecture specification, which makes it easier to join them together to form an overall system. In this case, this architecture in principle has nothing to do with the actual function of the component. In fact, it defines how the components interact with one another, but not how they “converse”. This characterization is independent of whether the specific component is in the form of software or hardware.
The trend towards component models is evident in the increasing importance of technologies which support distributed component systems, such as “Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI)” as the basis for the JavaBeans components “Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)” and “Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM)” from Microsoft for implementation of ActiveX. All these models use the client/server approach.
In the past, when vehicles have been delivered to the customer at the end of production, their functionality in terms of services that can be carried out has been relatively greatly fixed. In the future, however, more and more services will be used in vehicles, in the same way that they are also being used in the office and business worlds, even though they still scarcely exist at all at the moment when the vehicle is manufactured. In future, the customer will therefore wish to be able to reequip the vehicle with corresponding new services, for the life of the vehicle. If the reequipment is done by additionally downloading software into the vehicle, then the memory space required for this purpose in the vehicle will at some time no longer be adequate. On the other hand, reequipment additional hardware is comparatively costly and susceptible to faults, and in most cases involves the vehicle being left in a workshop.
There is therefore a requirement for systems which can relatively easily be reequipped with additional functions which are provided, for example, as software modules, so that no hardware modification is required. Furthermore, it is desirable to be able to match the system optimally to changing requirements and conditions by dynamic movement, preferably of software modules, to or from the system part on the vehicle side, for the life of the vehicle. This applies, for example, to changing conditions for wireless communication. If only narrowband communication is available, as little communication as possible should be carried out and as much of the necessary software as possible should be accommodated in the vehicle. On the other hand, if a communications link with a high transmission capacity is available, certain operating software can more advantageously be accommodated in a system part outside the vehicle, in order to allow the generally greater computation capacities there to be utilized.
One object of the present invention is to provide a vehicle information processing and vehicle control system of the type mentioned initially, whose structure for carrying out various vehicle-related applications is designed comparatively flexibly, so that reequipping with further functions is possible at relatively low cost. Also, the precondition is provided to allow the required applications to be carried out such that they are distributed variably, dynamically and flexibly between the system parts,
Fuchs Axel
Jameel Akthar
Stuempfle Matthias
Crowell & Moring LLP
Cuchlinski Jr. William A.
Daimler-Chrysler AG
Hernandez Olga
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