Data processing: vehicles – navigation – and relative location – Vehicle control – guidance – operation – or indication – Transmission control
Reexamination Certificate
2001-03-07
2003-03-11
Beaulieu, Yonel (Department: 3661)
Data processing: vehicles, navigation, and relative location
Vehicle control, guidance, operation, or indication
Transmission control
C477S043000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06532410
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention concerns a method for coordinating the operating behavior of a device for actuating a component of a motor vehicle, particularly a transmission:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Not only motor vehicle transmissions but also other components of a motor vehicle, such as clutches or valves, are increasingly being electronically controlled. To make an actuating device for such a motor vehicle component ready for production requires a testing phase in which multiple correcting parameters have to be coordinated. The expression “correcting parameter” stands for all variables that can be represented by single variables, characteristic lines, characteristic fields, tables and the like, which establish the operating characteristic of the actuating device. In automatic or automated transmissions, for example, whether the shifting characteristic is sporting or comfortable can be established by correcting parameters. The correcting parameters often have different values depending on the concrete driving situation.
In order that the actuating device provides a desired operating characteristic, an optimization is required-in the testing phase. For correcting parameters, adequate values must be found which provide the desired operating characteristic. This can be obtained, at least partly, within the scope of a simulation, but trials are likewise carried out to see how the actuating device conducts itself, to see how the actuating device actually behaves. This is especially the case in the final phase of development and testing of a new actuating device. It is important to carry out the tests on a vehicle which, in principle, already equals the production vehicles to be delivered to customers.
Only thus can it be ensured that no surprisingly irregular behavior appears in the production vehicles. For this reason, a vehicle is made available to the tester in which the actuating device to be tested is installed exactly as in the later production vehicles.
In modern vehicle manufacture, the structural combining of the vehicle electronic system with the controlled mechanical components is required more and more. Let the mechatronics be mentioned here only as a catchword.
It is thus known from the practice, e.g. in electronically controlled transmissions, to situate the control electronic system completely in the oil sump of the transmission. An arrangement of a transmission control unit in the oil sump has also been described in EP 0 697 080.
In such a transmission, the tester has no free access to the control electronic system to allow attachment of an emulation module by means of which the processor of the electronic control system could emulate the correcting parameter with different sets of parameter values. However, even in electronic control systems thus inaccessibly arranged, it is sought to give the tester the possibility of carrying out modifications of the correcting parameter “on board”, i.e. on the vehicle, in order that immediately thereafter he can set and can test the effects of his modifications.
The invention, therefore, is based on the problem of providing a method of the kind designated above which allows a coordination of the correcting parameters even when the control electronic system of the actuating device is installed in the motor vehicle so that there is no open access to it.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In solving this problem, the invention departs from a method for coordinating the operating behavior of a device for actuating a motor vehicle, especially a transmission, wherein the device comprises actuators for the motor vehicle components, the same as an electronic control unit which controls the actuators according to predetermined correcting parameters represented by data elements wherein in the method, an initial data element is first assigned to each correcting parameters. Then the operating behavior of the actuating device is tested with the initial data elements of the correcting parameters and on the strength of that, depending on the test results, new data elements are assigned at least to a part of the correcting parameters.
According to the invention, it is provided that each initial data element be stored in a programmable memory for constant values of the control unit and, with each stored initial data element, an additional blank address memory section in the memory for constant values be associated, that for each new data element, an addressable new data memory section and an appertaining address memory section is made available in which the new data element is stored, that the memory address of each new data element be written in the address memory section of the appertaining initial or reference data element, and that the control unit at each access tests on a correcting parameter, whether in the address memory section associated with the data element of this correcting parameter a memory address has been written and in the affirmative accesses the new data memory section addressed by the memory address, otherwise accesses the initial or reference data element of the correcting parameter.
The invention is based on the fact that the storing structure of the data elements is predetermined in a memory for constant values and cannot be changed by writing cycles. Therefore, the invention proposes to copy the storing structure of the original data elements and to write new data elements in the copy of the storing structure. In the original data section is written, at the same time a corresponding address reference which points to the copied storing structure with the new data elements.
An essential advantage of the inventive method is that it can be recursively applied. The whole process, i.e. the copy of the storing structure of the old data memory section plus a new deposit of the copied storing structure with new data elements with address reference from the old data memory section, can be consecutively repeated until the available blank data memory section is absolutely used up.
The expression data element stands here for the representation of a correcting parameter according to data technology. It is obvious that the variable of a data element and the inner data organization thereof can vary to a great extent, depending on whether the data element represents an individual value or whether it represents complex structures, such as a table or a characteristic field. It is absolutely possible that one data element be organized as data field consisting of a multiplicity of data words, but a data element can also consist only of a single data word.
When speaking of an initial data element, thereby it is understood aa a data element whose contents serve as point of departure for the subsequent coordination. The data contents of an initial data element can be arbitrarily established by the test person, e.g. according to experimental values. It can also form the result of a previous coordination procedure within the scope of which a rough coordination of the correcting parameters was obtained.
In the inventive solution, the initial data elements are written in a programmable constant memory value of the control unit. In the current electronic control systems, a constant memory value is regularly already available, namely, in the form of a program memory for a microprocessor program. The program memory can be dimensioned so as to offer sufficient memory space at least for the initial data elements beyond the control program. In this manner, it is possible (at least for the initial data elements) to eliminate an additional memory module, but it is obvious that the initial data elements can be written also in a separate memory module.
Today In microelectronic control circuits, constant value memories electrically erasable EEPROMS or flash EEPROMS are customarily used. Even though, in such constant value memories, it is basically possible to change the memory contents by erasing and a subsequent new entry, those superscribing processes often cannot be carried out without limit and frequently not within a sufficiently short time. For thi
Diebold Sven
Schmid Hugo
Sigg Peter
Beaulieu Yonel
David & Bujold, P.L.L.C.
ZF Friedrichshafen AG
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