Nissan Motor Company Limited

Hidetoshi Inagaki

Toru Futami

Hideo Takai

A system and method for communicating data between a master station and a plurality of control units applicable to an automotive vehicle are disclosed in which if an echoback communication in response to a control command is not received by the master station from the selected control unit within a predetermined period of time upon issuance of a continue command or a diagnostic execution command, the controlled state of the electronic control unit is released. Furthermore, to effectively diagnose the control operation of one of the control units interactively with the operation of other control units, an interrupt command may be issued while the selected control unit continues the predetermined control operation, and the remaining control units are then initialized. A different control unit may then be selected and set to a controlled state. While the second selected control unit is in the controlled state an interrupt command may be issued, thus maintaining the second selected control unit in a controlled state. A resume command is then issued to resume communication with the first selected control unit which has been maintained in a controlled state, so that the control operation of a control unit which is affected by the operation of any one of the other control units can appropriately be diagnosed.

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Tokyo, Japan

Hidetoshi Inagaki