FR2907237A1 - File downloading method for manufacturing plant of motor vehicles, involves establishing vehicle list, in which acknowledge received, by downloading tool, and comparing two vehicle lists to validate that vehicles are correctly taken back - Google Patents

Abstract

The method involves establishing a list of vehicles to be taken back, and alarming controllers in which a file is downloaded. The file is transmitted by a downloading tool to the controller. An acknowledge information is emitted by the controller of each vehicle to the downloading tool. Another vehicle list, in which an acknowledge received, is established by the tool. The lists are compared to validate that all vehicles are correctly taken back. An independent claim is also included for a system for downloading a file in controllers embarked in a motor vehicle.

Description

1 Method and system for downloading a file into computers

  of motor vehicles in recovery on park. The present invention relates to a method and a system for downloading a file in motor vehicle calculators in the park, using a download tool. The invention relates more particularly to a method and a system for downloading such a file in computers belonging to the same family and embedded in several separate motor vehicles already produced and stored on the park.

  Methods and systems for downloading files in on-board computers on board motor vehicles, such as those described for example in document FR-A-2 719 924, are already known in the state of the art. different successive stages of the procedure used in manufacture for mounting vehicles or in the after-sales network of a manufacturer, when correcting a service by file exchange. This download function has subsequently been optimized to make it compatible with manufacturing flow requirements, in which the downloading of all the computers of the same vehicle is carried out simultaneously. For example, reference may be made to document FRA-2,825,813 which describes this optimization. However, this optimization is not the best possible when it comes to performing a recovery operation on the park. Park uploading is indeed an operation that involves loading a new file into a set of vehicles produced and parked in the parking lot of a production plant awaiting delivery to the concessions. The requirements associated with both uploading to a vehicle manufacturing workflow and a park recovery were summarized below to understand how they differ.

  In a production flow of a vehicle production line, there are rarely two identical vehicles lined up in succession. The vehicles succeed each other with, for example, different engines, different options, etc. In fact, the vehicles are lined up according to the orders placed by the customers and it is therefore necessary to download a set of particular files during the passage. of each vehicle in the post of the tool used for uploading into the workflow. The speed of the memory transfer and write operation for each given vehicle is then the main criterion, since it is the last operation before the vehicle leaves the chain by its own means. The document FR-A-2,825,813 mentioned above describes a method and a system particularly adapted to this situation.

10 When vehicles come back on the road, the situation is quite different because we want to update a set of vehicles that have just been manufactured and are waiting for shipping. It is then in this case to redownload vehicles that have the same computer, for example that of the engine control. In the current state of the art, in order to carry out this operation, an operator must identify each vehicle on the park, connect the downloading tool to it, for example on the centralized diagnostic socket and start the update operation. of the software. Such an operation must be repeated as many times as there are vehicles to take over the park.

The downloading procedure, although optimized for downloading each calculator unitarily, is not optimized from a total point of view. Indeed, if we must take a thousand vehicles to correct the software, for example the engine ECU (same engine mounted on these thousand vehicles), the operator is obliged to run a thousand times the operation.

It is conceivable that the recovery operations of the one thousand vehicles are extremely long and tedious. The object of the invention is therefore to solve these problems. To this end, the subject of the invention is a method for downloading a file into motor vehicle computers that is taken over by a download tool, characterized in that it comprises: step of establishing a first list of vehicles to be taken back; 2907237 3 - a step of waking calculators in which it is appropriate to download the file; a step of transmission by the tool of this file intended for calculators; 5 - a step of issuing by the computer of each vehicle to the tool, an acknowledgment of receipt information; a step of establishing by the tool a second list of vehicles for which an acknowledgment of receipt has been received; and a step of comparing the first and second lists to validate whether all the vehicles have been correctly downloaded or not. According to particular embodiments, the downloading method comprises one or more of the following features: the comparison step is also associated with a step of archiving the download information; The method further comprises a step of testing the computers that are listening, by sending a piloted wake-up message and receiving an acknowledgment of receipt; the method comprises a step of verifying the reference of a software of an on-board computer in a given vehicle; and the method comprises a step of checking the dynamic parameters of the vehicle to ensure that they are null to allow or not the download procedure. The subject of the invention is also a system for downloading a file into motor vehicle calculators which is retrieved from a park using a download tool, characterized in that it comprises: means for establishment of an initial list of vehicles to be taken back; - Wake up means calculators in which to download the file; Means for transmitting this file; - Means for transmitting by the computer of each vehicle to the download tool, an acknowledgment of receipt information; - means for establishing a second list of vehicles for which an acknowledgment of receipt has been received; and means for comparing the first and second lists in order to validate that all the vehicles have been correctly downloaded or not.

The invention will be better understood with the aid of the description which follows, given solely by way of example and with reference to the appended drawings, in which: FIG. 1 represents a block diagram illustrating the implementation a park recovery system according to the invention; FIG. 2 represents a flowchart illustrating a download method according to the invention; and FIG. 3 represents a flowchart illustrating the processing of a wakeup request from a computer in a vehicle. FIG. 1 shows a block diagram illustrating the implementation of a download system according to the invention. In this figure, there is indeed a set of vehicles stored on the park and designated by the general reference 1. In order to perform an on-board computer download operation aboard these vehicles, a download tool, as designated, is used. by the general reference 2 in this figure. In fact, this system implements a download process that has six main steps. These different steps are illustrated for example on the flowchart of FIG.

The first step, designated by the general reference 3 in this figure 2, is a step of establishing a first list of the vehicles to be taken back on the park. This list is called L1 afterwards. This list of vehicles to be taken back is established directly for example from the VIN numbers of the vehicles. Each vehicle has in effect a unique VIN number, for Vehicle Identification Number, archived by the production system with the references of computers and embedded software on this vehicle, in a corresponding database.

2907237 5 It is therefore possible to create a link between this database and the download tool for park recovery so that the task of obtaining this list LI vehicles to be corrected is established almost automatically rather than manual and entrusted to an operator.

For this purpose, it is possible to create, for example, an IF function making it possible to retrieve in the download tool, from the database, all the VIN numbers corresponding for example to the vehicles produced between such and such dates and provided with a computer Cl, for example equipped with a REF_1 reference software. This function F1 can then be written in the following manner: FI = VIN reading (REF_1, DATE_start, DATE end) Once this list L1 is established, we then proceed to the second step of waking up at a distance in each vehicle the calculator concerned by the file that we want to download.

This awakening step is designated by the general reference 4 in FIG. 2. There are indeed today, in the deployments of vehicles, different possibilities for waking up computers remotely embedded by any solicitation. Indeed, to save the energy available on board the vehicle, the computers can for example go into standby when they do not have to ensure functional. An example of an alarm clock will be described in more detail below, with reference to FIG. 3. In fact, this alarm clock can be implemented by a function F2 enabling transmission, for example, by means of a radio link or the like. , the type of the requested function (Type_FONCTION), the source address (Address_SRC) to obtain answer, the physical address of the calculator to take back (Adresse_ECU), as well as the list of the VIN vehicles concerned (List_VIN). This function can then be written in the following way: F2 = VIN transmission (Functions_Type, SRC_address, ECU_address, VIN_list_N) 2907237 6 The type of function (download, ...) is only necessary in the case where several different features may require remote wake up. During the wake up of the vehicle, the download tool also transmits the address to which it wishes to obtain a report of each vehicle (Address_SCR). This address is kept in memory of the computers of all the vehicles being downloaded until the end of the procedure. The physical address of the computer (a simple CAN frame identifier for example 0x688 for an engine control computer) makes it possible to recognize in the vehicle that it will be necessary to wake up. That's the one that will be uploaded. This wakeup mode will condition in the software of each calculator the fact that it is indeed a park recovery request and select the right onboard procedure to use, between that of recovery park and that of download in the workflow much faster unitarily, but can not address several calculators of the same type. However, and in order to ensure the safety of the occupants of the vehicle, a prerequisite is to implement effective protection to ensure the impossibility of downloading the vehicle if it is in use. It should then be prohibited to activate the download procedure if the vehicle is loaded while the engine speed and / or the vehicle speed are not zero. A logigram of the conditions to be respected for each computer receptive to the procedure of uploading on park will be described with regard to Figure 3.

After this awakening, the download tool transmits the file to be downloaded to the computers, as illustrated by step 5 in FIG. 2. This step is carried out blindly, that is to say that the The download tool transmits the entire code to be programmed (REF_2) without obtaining a response from any calculator of the different vehicles to which it is addressed. During this step, the following various conventional substeps take place: erase the eprom flash, that is to say the memory containing the software; writing in memory of the received data; self-checking the integrity of the code in memory; and writing the identification field corresponding to the new reference of the software downloaded into memory. Such a function called F3 can then be written in the following way: F3 = Transmission_FILE (REF_2) The procedure of this downloading procedure is done by saving time in and between each sub-step, taking into account that the performance internal components of each computer are not identical and that we do not receive messages from them asking for example to postpone the further transmission of information.

The next step, denoted by the general reference 6 in FIG. 2, is a step of sending by the vehicle an acknowledgment to the downloading tool. This step then allows each vehicle to return an acknowledgment to the download tool to signify, after performing all checks associated with the procedure, that the update operation has been performed. At the end of the procedure, two possibilities exist: - either the procedure was successful and in this case, the_SRC_address is used by the computer to transmit the VIN of the vehicle; 25 or the operation was interrupted as a result of any problem (power failure, communication, checksum control, ...) and in this case, no transmission is returned to the tool. This function called F4 can then be written in the following way: F4 = Transmission ACCUSE-RECEPTION (Address_SRC, VIN) This then allows the download tool, during steps 7 and 8, to establish from the accused received from the vehicles a second L2 list of vehicles correctly picked up. This then makes it possible to check and validate that all the vehicles concerned by the recovery on the park have been correctly resumed. For this purpose, the downloading tool has a function of comparison between the transmitted VIN numbers and those having generated an acknowledgment, this comparison being carried out during the step designated by the general reference 8 in FIG. This comparison called F5 can then be written in the following way: F5 = Comparison (LIST_VIN, LIST ACCUSE ù RECEPTION (VIN)) At the end of this comparison, a step 9 of archiving of the corrected configurations is implemented . This step consists in archiving 10 in the database mentioned above, the updates made. The tool then has a function for transmitting to the line edge tool, the list of vehicles that have transmitted a receipt of acknowledgment of the procedure associated with the new reference of the software loaded in memory ( REF_2). This function 15 F6 can then be written in the following way: F6 = Archiving (LIST ACCUSED ù RECEPTION (VIN), Address_ECU, REF2) The transmission of the address _ECU will this time make it possible to identify the REF_1 of the base of data which will be replaced by REF_2 for the archiving of each vehicle configuration plotted by means of the VIN numbers of the list L2. Two other features that are not part of the same procedure for downloading in a park can nevertheless be interesting during its operation.

One of these features is a test function of listening computers. It is then necessary to transmit to a set of vehicles defined by the identification number VIN (to a type of computer embedded in these vehicles) a simple wake up message piloted and to receive a return receipt in order to s' ensure that the procedure is not going to be done in a vacuum. This FSI function can be written in the following way: FS1 = List_Test (WINE LIST, SRC_Address, ECU_address) 2907237 9 Another feature is to check the software reference of a computer in a given vehicle. This function FS2 is then written as follows: FS2 = Identification (VIN, SRC_Address, ECU_address) In FIG. 3, a flow diagram of the wake up processing of an on-board computer is illustrated. In 10, it has indeed been shown that it has received a wake up request. In 11, this request is tested to determine whether the download function is requested or not.

If this is not the case, in 12 the requested function is processed. On the other hand, if it is the case, it is checked at 13 if the dynamic parameters of the vehicle are zero, that is to say if for example the engine rotation speed and the speed of movement of the vehicle are zero. In 14, it tests whether it is an alarm clock of type piloted or not. If this is not the case, an initial download procedure, that is to say after-sales or assembly, is implemented. On the other hand, if it is the case, in 16 one checks if the frame identifier address_ECU is intended for this calculator or not. If this is the case, in 17, we provide a download procedure for the fleet recovery of vehicles.

Of course, still other embodiments can be envisaged.

Claims (6)

  1. A method for downloading a file in motor vehicle computers in park recovery using a download tool (2), characterized in that it comprises: - a step (3) of establishment of a first list (L1) of the vehicles to be taken back; a step (4) of waking calculators in which it is appropriate to download the file; a step (5) of transmission by the tool of this file intended for calculators; - A step (6) of transmission by the computer of each vehicle to the tool, an acknowledgment of receipt information; a step (7) of setting by the tool of a second list of vehicles (L2) for which an acknowledgment of receipt has been received; and a step (8) of comparing the first and second lists in order to validate that all the vehicles have been correctly downloaded or not.   2. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that the comparison step is also associated with a step of archiving the download information (9).   3. A method according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that it further comprises a step (FSI) for testing computers listening, by issuing a piloted wake-up message and receiving a return of a acknowledgment of receipt.   4. A method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that it comprises a step (FS2) of checking the reference of a software of a computer embedded in a given vehicle.   5.- Method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that it comprises a step (13) for verifying the dynamic parameters of the vehicle to ensure that they are null to allow or not the download procedure.   6. A system for downloading a file in motor vehicles calculators in park recovery using a download tool (2), characterized in that it comprises: - means (2) d establishment of a first list (L1) of the vehicles to be taken back; means (2) for waking the computers in which the file is to be downloaded; means (2) for transmitting this file; - means (2) for transmitting by the computer of each vehicle to the download tool, an acknowledgment of receipt information; Means (2) for establishing a second list (L2) of vehicles for which an acknowledgment of receipt has been received; and - means (2) for comparing the first and second lists in order to validate that all the vehicles have been correctly downloaded or not.