Preserving vehicle anonymity in cloud-assisted vehicle localization and control

Abstract

Methods are disclosed that involve exchanging vehicle-related information between a vehicle and a remote database. In some implementations, data can be collected based on measurements by sensors mounted on the vehicle. The location of the vehicle can also be determined. If the location is within a data protection zone or on a data protection road segment, the exchange of vehicle-related information can be avoided or omitted to protect the anonymity of the vehicle and / or its occupants. If the vehicle is outside the data protection zone or road segment, vehicle data can be exchanged with the remote database. In some implementations, the data protection zone or road segment can be determined based on information received from a user interface in the vehicle.

Description

[Technical field]

[0001] CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS This application claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. § 119 of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63 / 300,424, filed January 18, 2022, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.

[0002] Field The disclosed embodiments relate to a system and related methods of use for anonymizing vehicles used in conjunction with terrain-based localization and insights for in-vehicle systems. [Background technology]

[0003] background The road surface data from the remote centralized database can be used for very accurate localization and control of various vehicle systems, such as advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), active suspension systems, semi-active suspension systems, and / or autonomous or semi-autonomous driving controllers. Summary of the Invention [Means for solving the problem]

[0004] overview According to an aspect of the disclosure, a method is provided for operating a vehicle on a road surface while exchanging vehicle specific information with a remote database. The method can include collecting data based on measurements by sensors mounted on the vehicle moving over the road surface, determining a location of the vehicle as the data is being collected, determining if the location is within a predefined data protection zone, and uploading the collected data to the remote database if the location is not within the data protection zone. In some embodiments, the method can include storing the collected data in a local database mounted on the vehicle if the location is within the data protection zone. In some embodiments, the collected data includes information related to the road surface. In some embodiments, the collected data can include information that can be used to determine the location of the vehicle, for example, by using a terrain-based localization based on the localization. In some embodiments, the method can include using geofencing to define the data protection zone. In some embodiments, the data protection zone can be established based on parameters received via a user interface (UI) or a human machine interface (HMI). In some embodiments, determining the location of the vehicle inside the data protection zone can be based at least in part on information received from a GNSS receiver mounted on the vehicle. In some embodiments, determining a location of the vehicle outside the data protection zone may be based at least in part on information about roads received from a remote database. In some embodiments, the remote database resides in a cloud. In some embodiments, the method further comprises controlling at least one system on board the vehicle when the vehicle is outside the data protection zone based on information about roads received from the remote database. In some embodiments, the at least one system is a suspension system.

[0005] According to an aspect of the disclosure, a method is provided for restricting the exchange of information between a vehicle moving on a road surface and a remote database. The method can include receiving information from a user interface, establishing a first data protection zone associated with the vehicle, and restricting the exchange of information between the remote database related to the location of the vehicle and / or data collected by the vehicle within the first data protection zone. In some embodiments, the user interface can be on-board the vehicle. In some embodiments, the user interface is a cell phone application. In some embodiments, it is a computer application. In some embodiments, the information from the user interface includes geographic coordinates of a location within the first data protection zone or on a boundary of the data protection zone. In some embodiments, the first data protection zone is a circle, in which case the location is the center of the circle, and in which case the information from the user interface also includes a radius of the circle. Also, in some embodiments, the method can include receiving further information from the user interface, establishing a second data protection zone associated with the vehicle, and restricting the exchange of information between the remote database related to the location of the vehicle and / or data collected by the vehicle within the second data protection zone. In some embodiments, restricting the exchange of information includes preventing the uploading of road vehicle position and / or surface information collected by vehicles within the data protection zone.

[0006] According to an aspect of the disclosure, a method is provided for restricting exchange of road surface information between a vehicle traveling along a route of travel and a remote database. The method can include collecting road surface information while traveling by the vehicle along the route of travel based on data from at least one sensor onboard the vehicle, and restricting uploading of at least a portion of the road surface information collected while traveling along a predefined first portion of the route of travel. In some embodiments, the first portion of the route of travel is a portion at a start point of the route. In some embodiments, the first portion of the route of travel is a portion at an end point of the route. In some embodiments, the method can include receiving information about the route of travel from a navigation system associated with the vehicle, and determining the portion based at least in part on the information received from the navigation system. In some embodiments, the method can include storing in a local database onboard the vehicle at least a portion of the road surface information collected while traveling along the predefined first portion of the route of travel. In some embodiments, the method can include operating at least one system onboard the vehicle based on the road surface information stored in the local database during subsequent travel by the vehicle along the predefined portion. In some embodiments, the at least one system is a suspension system. In some embodiments, the suspension system is an active suspension system.

[0007] According to an aspect of the disclosure, there is provided a method for operating a vehicle on a road surface while exchanging vehicle specific information with a remote database, the method including using GNSS to determine an approximate location of the vehicle, determining whether the approximate location is within a predefined data protection zone or on a data protection road segment, and providing the approximate location of the vehicle to the remote database if the vehicle is not within the predefined data protection zone or on a data protection road segment.

[0008] It should be understood that the present disclosure is not limited in this respect and that the above-mentioned concepts and further concepts described below may be arranged in any suitable combination. Furthermore, other advantageous and novel features of the present disclosure will become apparent from the following detailed description of various non-limiting embodiments when considered in conjunction with the accompanying figures. [Brief description of the drawings]

[0009] BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS [Figure 1] 1 illustrates a cloud-based vehicle location and control system that includes two independent cloud-based databases. [Diagram 2] 1 shows a road network with two data protection zones indicated. [Diagram 3] 1 shows a road segment with two data protected road segments shown. [Figure 4] A method is presented for operating a vehicle during periods during which data exchange with a remote database is restricted in order to protect the anonymity of the vehicle. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

[0010] Detailed Description A vehicle moving along a roadway, either autonomously or under driver control, may interact with one or more road surface features that may expose the vehicle and / or one or more vehicle occupants to certain forces or accelerations. Such road features may affect the comfort and / or safety of the vehicle occupants as well as the wear and tear of the vehicle. The magnitude, direction, and / or frequency of such forces or accelerations may be a function of the characteristics of one or more aspects or features of the roadway. A typical roadway may include various types of road surface features, such as, for example, surface anomalies including, without limitation, potholes, frost heaves or other bumps, surface cracks, expansion joints, bumps, slow-down pavements, storm grates, etc., and / or surface properties including, without limitation, surface texture, surface composition, surface camber, surface slope, etc. The road surface properties may affect road surface parameters, such as, for example, the coefficient of friction between the vehicle's tires and the roadway, traction, and / or the grip of the roadway.

[0011] Properties and surface features of roads over which a vehicle may travel can be mapped to provide forward-looking information about road features located along the path of travel of the vehicle. This information about the road features ahead of the vehicle can be used, for example, to dynamically tune, prime, and / or control various automated or partially automated systems within the vehicle (e.g., (e.g., semi- or fully active) suspension systems, propulsion systems, adaptive driver assistance systems (ADAS), electric power steering systems (EPS), anti-lock braking systems (ABS), etc.).

[0012] A location system and method incorporating terrain-based location can provide better resolution than a system that relies solely on a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) for location. In a terrain-based location system, a pre-measured road profile can be obtained by measuring the vertical motion of a portion of a vehicle using one or more motion sensors mounted on the vehicle as the vehicle moves along a road. This measured road surface information (e.g., road profile) can be compared to reference road surface information obtained from a remote or local database, and the position of the vehicle along the road can be determined based at least in part on the comparison. The reference road surface information can be based on information collected during multiple movements along the same road by one or more vehicles. The road surface information can be stored in a remote database, such as in the cloud, and can be accessed in a microprocessor on board the vehicle when needed, and can be used to control one or more vehicle systems as well as to locate the vehicle.

[0013] In some embodiments, a vehicle traveling along a road may request access to information about the road surface stored on the cloud database for use in terrain-based positioning or preview control of an on-board system. The requesting vehicle may also provide (e.g., upload) certain information to the cloud database. This uploaded information may include, without limitation, the vehicle's estimated current location (e.g., based on geographic coordinates obtained from an on-board GNSS receiver), road surface information collected by the vehicle while traveling along the road, and / or information that may uniquely identify the vehicle. Such uniquely identifiable vehicle information may include, for example, the vehicle's vehicle identification number (VIN), a cell phone number associated with the vehicle, or an IP address of a communication device mounted on the vehicle that accesses the Internet. The uploaded road surface information may be used to update or otherwise improve data about the road in the cloud database. The uniquely identifiable information about the vehicle may be used to track information received from a particular vehicle for various reasons, such as, for example, quality control or data interpretation. For example, in some cases, a vehicle may have a malfunctioning sensor and may frequently or continually generate erroneous data. To avoid the inclusion of information from vehicles that have previously provided erroneous information, vehicles can be ranked according to the reliability of the data they generate. Such ranking scores can be associated with the vehicle ID so that poor quality data can be filtered out or not emphasized. Additionally or alternatively, the vehicle ID can also be used to determine the model of the vehicle so that its performance or response can be compared with that of other vehicles of the same or similar models with similar mileage. Based on this comparison, off-design performance of one or more vehicle systems can be identified and reported to the vehicle.Additionally or alternatively, data reported by a particular vehicle while traveling on the same or similar roads may be associated with the vehicle's unique identifier so that any unusual or unexpected deterioration may be detected and reported to the vehicle. Thus, providing uniquely identifiable information about the vehicle may enable certain valuable vehicle-specific information to be returned to the vehicle in addition to road surface information at the vehicle's current location.

[0014] When serving road data to vehicles for consumption, the cloud can conserve bandwidth by serving only the most likely route that the vehicle will travel. Some roads are generally relatively popular and likely to be traveled, but individual driver behavior may favor certain roads. For example, a driver may often travel a particular back road to reach his or her home residence. If the cloud application knows that the vehicle often travels this back road, it can conserve cellular bandwidth by serving only road data along that road (rather than the surrounding roads). Thus, the cloud application is interested in tracking the behavior of individual drivers, and the cloud needs information that uniquely identifies each vehicle to do this.

[0015] In some embodiments of a cloud-based vehicle location and / or control system, there may be multiple independent cloud-based databases that may be used. As used herein, the term "independent cloud-based databases" refers to two or more cloud-based databases that may be managed independently of one another, e.g., owned or operated by an entity such as a company.

[0016] 1 illustrates a cloud-based vehicle localization and control system 10 that may include two independent databases or data repositories, e.g., cloud-based databases 11 and 12. Cloud-based database 11 may be owned, controlled (directly or indirectly), or managed (directly or indirectly), e.g., by a vehicle manufacturer. Cloud-based database 12 may be owned, controlled (directly or indirectly), or managed (directly or indirectly), e.g., by an entity that is independent of the entity that owns, controls, or manages database 11. Database 11 may communicate directly with vehicle 14 to receive information from vehicle 14, e.g., including data regarding the vehicle's estimated location (which may be determined by using GNSS) and / or information regarding the portion of the road surface that has just been traveled. Additionally or alternatively, database 11 may also provide information to the vehicle, e.g., information regarding the road traversed by the vehicle. The road-related data exchanged may include information regarding the road surface profile (e.g., road surface anomalies, discontinuities) and / or road surface properties, such as, for example, the surface coefficient of friction, at various points or portions along the road surface 16. For example, the road surface information may include data regarding lateral characteristics of the road surface (e.g., width, height, depth, length) that may characterize portions of the road larger than the vehicle, such as anomalies (e.g., potholes 18, bumps (e.g., frost heave) 20, and depressions 22) that may be at the same scale as the vehicle, or changes in nominal road slope 24. Data uploaded by the vehicle 14 to the cloud-based database 11 may also include unencrypted or publicly recognizable vehicle identification metadata (i.e., "public vehicle identifiers"), such as, for example, a vehicle identification number (VIN), a cell phone number associated with the vehicle 14, or an IP address of a vehicle-mounted communications device used to access the Internet.

[0017] At least a portion of the information 14a associated with the vehicle 14 that accesses the database 11 may be forwarded to the independent database 12 for further analysis and / or processing. However, before forwarding such data to the database 12, a microprocessor 26 associated with the database 11 may modify or replace at least a portion of the public vehicle identifier that may identify the source vehicle 14 of the data 14a. In some implementations, the processor 26 may generate a new or modified confidential or encrypted unique tracking identifier (i.e., a "private vehicle identifier") associated with the portion of the data 14a provided to the database 12. The private tracking identifier may be used by one or more microprocessors 28 associated with the database 12 to track the data 14a without having access to some or all of the original public vehicle identifier transmitted to the database 11 by the vehicle 14.

[0018] In some embodiments, a unique private tracking identifier may be assigned to each vehicle providing data accessing database 12 or to each interval of driving session data from a given vehicle accessing database 12. In some embodiments, a per-session identification scheme may be used to track data associated with a vehicle in database 12 without access to a public vehicle identifier. In situations where a unique tracking identifier is assigned for each session, database 11 may maintain a map relating public and private vehicle identifiers. Using such a map, in some embodiments, processor 26 may recover the vehicle identity of any session referenced by processor 28.

[0019] The microprocessor 28 can append or otherwise associate an appropriate tracking private vehicle identifier with the data 12a transmitted back to the database 11. As a result, the microprocessor 26 can rely on the private tracking identifier to identify the vehicle 14 and to transmit information 11b to the vehicle 14 that may relate, for example, to the location of the vehicle 14 and / or the operation of one or more systems within that vehicle. Such information can include, for example, information regarding the capabilities of one or more systems on board the vehicle to perform a particular task, such as sensors to collect particular data and suspension systems to apply particular passive or active forces.

[0020] As a result, data may be exchanged between a remote database and a vehicle, e.g., database 12 and vehicle 14, respectively, and / or processed by a processor associated with the remote database, e.g., microprocessor 28, while restricting access to the public vehicle identifier associated with the vehicle, e.g., vehicle 14, by an independent remote database, e.g., cloud-based database 12.

[0021] The inventors have recognized that in some embodiments, under certain operating conditions, because a vehicle may frequently travel the same route, e.g., between home and work, each day of the working week, it may be possible to identify a particular vehicle with distinctiveness based on information regarding, e.g., the start and end of the vehicle's daily travels.

[0022] 2 shows an exemplary road network with first roads 32 and 34 and second roads 36a-36j. A person living at home 38 and working in a building 39 can travel, for example, from point X1 to point X2 along the second road 36d, from point X2 to point X3 along the first road 34, and from point X3 to point X4 along the second road 36j. Alternatively, the person living at home 38 can choose to drive or be carried by, for example, an autonomous vehicle to work, for example, by traveling from point X1 to point Y1 along the second road 36d, from point Y1 to point Y2 along the second road 36e, from point Y2 to point Y3 along the first road 32, and from point Y3 to point X4 along the second road 36j. On the return trip, the person may travel along one of these two routes in the reverse direction, or may choose a partially or completely different route.

[0023] Vehicles traveling along these routes can identify their location to a remote database (e.g., a cloud-based database) and can request surface information that can be used, for example, for terrain-based positioning and control (which may be more accurate and / or precise than GNSS positioning) of one or more on-board systems. Vehicles may also upload information collected by them to the remote database, where the information can be used to update or add to information stored in the remote database regarding the surface over which they are traveling.

[0024] In some embodiments, under certain operating conditions, a vehicle manufacturer, owner, operator, and / or occupant may wish to upload information to a remote database and / or download road surface information that may be available to them. However, such organizations and / or individuals may not wish for the vehicle to be identified with a high degree of specificity so that its location may be tracked based on its interactions with the cloud. The anonymity of the vehicle may be protected by establishing one or more data protection zones. Two such zones are shown in FIG. 2: a circular zone 40 with its center located at the home 38 and a rectangular zone 42 that includes the building 39. A system on the vehicle or in the cloud may prevent or limit certain information or types of information that may be used to identify the vehicle with specificity from being exchanged by the vehicle when it is within any data protection zone. The size, shape, and / or location of the zone may be determined by a system on the vehicle or in the cloud and / or based on information provided by the vehicle operator, owner, and / or manufacturer. The size, shape, and / or location of the zone may be determined based on information regarding, for example, a type or model of vehicle, a population density of vehicles of a particular type or model in a particular area, and / or a general population density of vehicles in a particular area.

[0025] However, the vehicle may continue to collect road surface information while it is within the data protection zone, and instead of uploading the data to a remote database, the vehicle may retain the data locally and develop a self-contained road surface information database that the vehicle may use during subsequent travels for terrain-based positioning and / or control of one or more systems installed on the vehicle. Alternatively, a vehicle operator traveling from within the data protection zone 40 may download information for some or all of the roads in the zone offline, without identifying the specific location of the vehicle. This data may then be stored locally and accessed for purposes of terrain-based positioning and / or on-board system control.

[0026] FIG. 3 shows the road network 30 of FIG. 2, where the on-board vehicle or in-cloud system can prevent or limit data exchange with a remote database during the initial and / or final part of the trip. For example, a vehicle traveling from home 38 to building 39 can avoid uploading vehicle position information and / or road surface information collected by the vehicle during the initial part of the trip, such as from point A1 to point A2, and the final part of the trip, such as from point B1 to point B2. The length of these parts in time or distance of the trip can be pre-selected and changed based on, for example, the population density of vehicles or people in a particular area. In areas with high population density, the length of the initial and / or final part of the trip can be relatively short. In sparsely populated areas, the initial and / or final part of the trip can be relatively long to protect anonymity.

[0027] In some implementations, the size, shape, and / or location of the data protection zone or the length of the initial or final portion of the road that is a data protection road segment can be defined by using a human machine interface (HMI) system in the vehicle. Alternatively, in some implementations, certain distance intervals of data at the beginning and / or end of each session can be automatically excluded from uploading. For example, excluding data collected in the first and last mile of a 10 mile driving session can be sufficient to obscure the origin and destination of the vehicle's travel. To achieve this, the vehicle can selectively upload data with some time delay. When the vehicle ends the driving session, the vehicle can discard pending upload data to conceal its destination and / or protect the anonymity of the vehicle owner, operator, and / or passengers. Alternatively or additionally, the initial and / or final segment of the road can be determined based on information about the planned route from the navigation system.

[0028] 4, a method 50 for operating a vehicle during a period during which data upload to a remote database is restricted to protect the anonymity of the vehicle is shown. The method includes determining the location of the vehicle using GNSS (52), determining whether the vehicle is moving in a data protection zone or on a data protection road segment (54), and if yes, restricting uploading of certain information to the remote database, if no, exchanging location and / or road information with the remote database (56), and if yes, using information stored on-board the vehicle for terrain-based positioning and / or controlling on-board systems of the vehicle, if no, using information from the remote database for terrain-based positioning and / or controlling on-board systems of the vehicle (58).

[0029] Alternatively, in certain implementations (such as those described in conjunction with FIGs. 1-4), road-related information collected by a vehicle may be provided to multiple cloud-based databases. For example, sensitive information that may be used for vehicle identification, such as data collected within a data protection zone (such as those described in conjunction with FIG. 2) or a data protection road segment (such as those described in conjunction with FIG. 3), may be shared exclusively with certain databases (such as databases owned or controlled by the vehicle OEM), while less sensitive information that may not be readily used for vehicle identification may be shared more broadly with other databases.

[0030] The above-described embodiments of the techniques described herein may be implemented in any of a number of ways. For example, the embodiments may be implemented using hardware, software, or a combination thereof. When implemented in software, the software code may be executed on any suitable processor or collection of processors, whether provided in a single computer or distributed across multiple computers. Such a processor may be implemented as an integrated circuit, with one or more processors present in an integrated circuit component, including commercially available integrated circuit components referred to in the art by names such as CPU chips, GPU chips, microprocessors, microcontrollers, or coprocessors. Alternatively, the processor may be implemented in a semi-custom circuit resulting from constructing a custom circuit such as an ASIC or a programmable logic device. As a further alternative, the processor may be part of a larger circuit or semiconductor device, whether commercially available, semi-custom, or custom. As a specific example, some commercially available microprocessors have multiple cores, such that one or a subset of the cores may constitute a processor. However, the processor may be implemented using a circuit in any suitable format.

[0031] Further, it should be understood that a computer may be embodied in any of a number of forms, such as a rack-mounted computer, a desktop computer, a laptop computer, or a tablet computer, etc. In addition, a computer may also be embodied within devices not generally considered to be computers, but having suitable processing capabilities, including a personal digital assistant (PDA), a smart phone, or any other suitable portable or fixed electronic device.

[0032] A computer may also have one or more input and output devices. These devices, among others, can be used to present a user interface. Examples of output devices that may be used to provide a user interface include a printer or display screen for visual presentation of output and a speaker or other sound generating device for audible presentation of output. Examples of input devices that may be used for a user interface include keyboards and pointing devices such as mice, touch pads, and digitizing tablets. As another example, a computer can receive input information through speech recognition or in other audible formats.

[0033] Such computers may be interconnected by one or more networks in any suitable form, including as a local area network or an enterprise network or a wide area network such as the Internet. Such networks may be based on any suitable technology and may operate according to any suitable protocol, and may include wireless networks, wired networks, or fiber optic networks.

[0034] The various methods or processes outlined herein may also be coded as software executable on one or more processors utilizing any of a variety of operating systems or platforms. Additionally, such software may be written using any of a number of suitable programming languages ​​and / or programming or scripting tools, and compiled as executable machine code or intermediate code that runs on a framework or virtual machine.

[0035] In this respect, the embodiments described herein may be embodied as a computer-readable medium (or multiple computer-readable media) (e.g., a computer memory, one or more floppy disks, compact disks (CDs), optical disks, digital video disks (DVDs), magnetic tapes, flash memories, circuitry in field programmable gate arrays or other semiconductor devices, or other tangible computer storage media) encoded with one or more programs that, when run on one or more computers or other processors, perform methods that implement the various embodiments described above. As is evident from the above examples, a computer-readable storage medium may retain information for a sufficient period of time to provide computer-executable instructions in a non-transitory form. Such computer-readable storage medium or media may be transportable such that one or more programs stored thereon may be loaded onto one or more different computers or other processors to implement the various aspects of the present disclosure described above. As used herein, the term "computer-readable storage medium" encompasses only non-transitory computer-readable media that may be considered to be an article of manufacture (i.e., an article of manufacture) or machine. Alternatively or additionally, the present disclosure may be embodied as a computer-readable medium other than a computer-readable storage medium, such as a propagating signal.

[0036] The terms "program" or "software" are used herein in a general sense to mean any type of computer code or set of computer-executable instructions that may be used to program a computer or other processor to implement various aspects of the present disclosure as described above. In addition, in accordance with one aspect of the present embodiment, it is to be understood that one or more computer programs that, when executed, perform the methods of the present disclosure do not necessarily reside on a single computer or processor, but may be distributed in a modular manner across several different computers or processors to implement various aspects of the present disclosure.

[0037] Computer-executable instructions may be in many forms, such as program modules, executed by one or more computers or other devices. Generally, program modules include routines, programs, objects, components, data structures, etc. that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. Typically the functionality of the program modules may be combined or distributed as desired in various embodiments.

[0038] The data structures may also be stored in the computer-readable medium in any suitable form. For purposes of simplicity of illustration, the data structures may be depicted as having fields that are related through locations within the data structure. Such relationships may also be achieved by assigning locations within the computer-readable medium that convey the relationships between the fields to the storage for the fields. However, any suitable mechanism may be used to establish relationships between information within the fields of the data structures, including through the use of pointers, tags, or other mechanisms that establish relationships between data elements.

[0039] Various aspects of the disclosure may be used alone, in combination, or in various configurations not specifically described in the embodiments described above, and therefore are not limited in their application to the details and arrangements of components set forth in the above description or illustrated in the drawings. For example, aspects described in one embodiment may be combined in any manner with aspects described in other embodiments.

[0040] The embodiments described herein may also be implemented as methods, examples of which are provided. The acts performed as part of a method may be ordered in any suitable manner. Thus, embodiments may be constructed in which acts are performed in an order different from that shown, including performing some acts simultaneously despite being shown as sequential acts in the illustrated embodiments.

[0041] Additionally, some actions are described as being performed by a "user." It should be understood that a "user" need not be a single individual, and that in some embodiments actions that may be attributed to a "user" may be performed by a team of individuals and / or an individual in combination with computer-assisted tools or other mechanisms.

[0042] While the present teachings have been described in conjunction with various embodiments and examples, it is not intended that the present teachings be limited to such embodiments or examples. On the contrary, the present teachings encompass various alternatives, modifications, and equivalents, as will be appreciated by those skilled in the art. Accordingly, the foregoing description and drawings are by way of example only.

Claims

1. 1. A method for operating a vehicle on a road surface while exchanging vehicle specific information with a remote database, comprising: collecting data based on measurements by sensors mounted on the vehicle moving on a road surface; determining a location of the vehicle as the data is being collected; determining whether the location is within a predefined data protection zone; uploading the collected data to a remote database if the location is not within the data protection zone; The method according to claim 1,

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising storing the collected data in a local database onboard the vehicle if the location is within the data protection zone.

3. A method according to any preceding claim, wherein the collected data comprises information relating to the road surface.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the collected data includes information that can be used to determine the location of the vehicle.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising using geofencing to define the data protection zone.

6. 6. The method of claim 1, wherein the data protection zone is established based on parameters received via a user interface.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the location of the vehicle inside the data protection zone is based at least in part on information received from a GNSS receiver mounted on the vehicle.

8. 7. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the location of the vehicle outside the data protection zone is based at least in part on information about the road received from the remote database.

9. The method of any one of claims 1 to 6, wherein the remote database is in the cloud.

10. 10. The method of claim 1, further comprising controlling at least one system installed in the vehicle based on information about the road received from the remote database when the vehicle is outside the data protection zone.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein at least one system is a suspension system.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein the at least one system is an active suspension system.

13. A method for restricting the exchange of information between a vehicle moving on a road surface and a remote database 0001, comprising: Receiving information from a user interface; and establishing a first data protection zone associated with the vehicle; restricting the exchange of information between the remote database and the vehicle related to a location of the vehicle and / or to data collected by the vehicle within the first data protection zone; The method according to claim 1,

14. The method of claim 13 , wherein the user interface is on-board the vehicle.

15. The method of claim 14 , wherein the user interface is a cell phone application.

16. The method of claim 14 , wherein the user interface is a computer application.

17. 17. A method according to any one of claims 13 to 16, wherein the information from the user interface comprises geographical coordinates of a location within the first data protection zone or on a boundary of the data protection zone.

18. 20. The method of claim 17, wherein the first data protection zone is a circle, the location is a center of the circle, and the information from the user interface also includes a radius of the circle.

19. receiving further information from the user interface; and establishing a second data protection zone associated with the vehicle; restricting the exchange of information between the remote database and the remote database related to the location of the vehicle and / or to data collected by the vehicle within the second data protection zone; 19. The method of any one of claims 13 to 18, further comprising:

20. 20. A method according to any one of claims 13 to 19, wherein the restriction of the exchange of information comprises preventing uploading of road vehicle position and / or surface information collected by the vehicle within a data protection zone.

21. 1. A method for limiting exchange of road surface information between a vehicle traveling along a route of travel and a remote database, comprising: collecting road surface information while traveling along the travel route by the vehicle based on data from at least one sensor mounted on the vehicle; limiting uploading of at least a portion of road surface information collected while traveling along a first predetermined location of the travel route; The method according to claim 1,

22. 22. The method of claim 21, wherein the first portion of the travel route is a portion at a beginning of the route.

23. 22. The method of claim 21, wherein the first portion of the travel route is a portion of the route at an end point.

24. receiving information regarding a route of travel from a navigation system associated with the vehicle; determining the portion based at least in part on the information received from the navigation system; 24. The method of any one of claims 21 to 23, further comprising:

25. 25. The method of any one of claims 21 to 24, further comprising storing at least a portion of road surface information collected while traveling along the first predetermined portion of the travel route in a local database installed on the vehicle.

26. 26. The method of claim 25, further comprising operating at least one system installed in the vehicle based on the road surface information stored in the local database during subsequent travel by the vehicle along the predetermined portion.

27. 27. The method of claim 26, wherein the at least one system is a suspension system.

28. 28. The method of claim 27, wherein the suspension system is an active suspension system.

29. 1. A method for operating a vehicle on a road surface while exchanging vehicle specific information with a remote database, comprising: using a GNSS to determine an approximate location of the vehicle; determining whether the general location is within a predefined data protection zone or on a data protection road segment; providing the general location of the vehicle to the remote database if the vehicle is not within the predefined data protection zone or on a data protection road segment; The method according to claim 1,

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