FUNCTIONALLY EXPANDABLE VEHICLE CONTROL DEVICE AND METHOD FOR SUPPLEMENTING THE FUNCTIONALITY OF A VEHICLE CONTROL DEVICE

摘要

A vehicle control device for supplementing/changing the functionality of a vehicle control device. A vehicle control device is created having at least one processor, a memory coupled to the processor, a plurality of application modules, and at least one communication interface for interchanging data with other vehicle control devices or an external vehicle device. Also disclosed is a method for supplementing/changing the functionality of a vehicle control device.

主权项

1. A vehicle controller, comprising:
at least one processor; a memory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory stores program codes from an operating system that are able to be executed on the processor; a plurality of application modules that provide functionalities of the vehicle controller; and at least one communication interface for data interchange with other vehicle controllers or with an external vehicle device, wherein the application modules each have the program and data memory areas of the memory that are needed for their respective execution statically associated with them, and wherein the operating system is designed to allow the individual application modules access to the processor at previously statically stipulated intervals of time for the purpose of executing their program code, wherein one of the plurality of application modules is in the form of an update module in order to use the at least one communication interface to receive program code from one or more augmenting modules and to store it in the memory in order to prompt an expansion and/or change in the functionality of the vehicle controller, wherein one of the plurality of application modules is in the form of a runtime environment module that provides a runtime environment in order to execute the program code of the one or more augmenting modules, and wherein the update module is designed to store the program code of the augmenting module(s) in the program memory associated with the runtime environment module, wherein the runtime environment module is designed to split the data memory area allocated to it and the processor access time available to it dynamically at runtime in order to execute the program code of the one or more augmenting modules.