BACKGROUND

1. Technical Field

The present disclosure relates to technology that updates firmware in an electronic control unit that communicates on an on-board network.

2. Description of the Related Art

Recently, in systems inside automobiles, devices called electronic control units (ECUs) are being disposed in large numbers. A network joining these ECUs is called an on-board network. Various standards exist for on-board networks. One of the most prevalent on-board network standards is called a controller area network (CAN) prescribed in ISO 11898-1.

In a CAN, communication links are formed using two buses, and an ECU connected to a bus is called a node. Each node connected to a bus transmits and receives messages called frames. In addition, in a CAN, identifiers that indicate the destination and the source of a transmission do not exist, and instead, the transmitting node transmits (in other words, sends out signals on the buses) while attaching an ID called a message ID to each frame, while each receiving node receives (in other words, reads signals from the buses) only a predetermined message ID.

When many ECUs are operating in conjunction with each other by exchanging messages via buses, if an ECU starts updating its firmware, there is a possibility of affecting the running of the automobile, due to factors such as the ECU being unable to exchange messages during the update. Regarding this point, there is known a technology that updates firmware only in a case of determining, from information indicating the state of the automobile, that the firmware of the ECU may be updated, such as while the automobile is stopped (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2010-273181).

SUMMARY

However, in the above technology of the related art, further improvement is necessary.

In one general aspect, the techniques disclosed here feature a gateway device connected to a bus used in communication by a plurality of electronic control units provided on-board a vehicle, the gateway device comprising: processing circuitry; and storage including at least one set of instructions that, when executed by the processing circuitry, cause the processing circuitry to perform operations including receiving, from an external device external to the vehicle, firmware update information that includes updated firmware for one electronic control unit from among the plurality of electronic control units, acquiring system configuration information indicating a type of each of the plurality of electronic control units connected to the bus, and performing a controlling operation to update firmware of the relevant electronic control unit on a basis of the updated firmware, after an operation verification of the updated firmware is performed using an electronic control unit of each type indicated by the system configuration information.

According to the above aspect, further improvements may be realized.

It should be noted that general or specific embodiments may be implemented as a device, system, integrated circuit, computer program, or computer-readable recording medium such as a CD-ROM disc, or any selective combination thereof.

Additional benefits and advantages of the disclosed embodiments will become apparent from the specification and drawings. The benefits and/or advantages may be individually obtained by the various embodiments and features of the specification and drawings, which need not all be provided in order to obtain one or more of such benefits and/or advantages.

