Invented by Langefeld; Jonathan, Messenzio; Marco, Xiang; Zhimin, GM Cruise Holdings LLC

Let’s explore how a new patent application is changing the way resources are managed and set up in the world of autonomous vehicles (AVs). We’ll look at why this is important, how it builds on earlier ideas, and what makes this invention special. By the end, you’ll have a clear, easy-to-understand view of a complex topic that could shape the future of smart cars and cloud systems.

Background and Market Context

The world is quickly moving toward a time when cars can drive themselves. These autonomous vehicles are popping up in cities everywhere, from delivering food to taking people to work or school. But behind the scenes, making all this work is not as simple as putting a robot in the driver’s seat.

These vehicles depend on a huge amount of technology: cameras, sensors, computers, and, most importantly, software running in the cloud. The cloud is like a big, invisible computer you connect to over the Internet. It stores data, runs programs, and helps cars make smart choices in real time. Every AV needs to talk to the cloud to get maps, traffic updates, and even help from engineers if something goes wrong.

The companies running these smart cars don’t just build the cars—they also have to manage a giant “back end.” This means setting up many computer systems to store data, handle requests, process maps, and keep things secure. Every time a new service is needed (maybe a faster map update or a better way to talk to the car), someone has to set up new pieces in the cloud. This is called “provisioning resources.”

Doing this by hand is slow and confusing. Different teams might use different tools. Mistakes are easy to make. As AV fleets get bigger, the problem gets worse. Every new feature or fix might require setting up more cloud databases, storage, accounts, or firewalls. If it takes too long or is done wrong, the cars might not work as well, or data might not be safe.

That’s where this patent comes in. The invention is all about making it much easier, faster, and safer to set up these cloud resources for AV services. Instead of doing everything by hand, the system lets you describe what you need in a simple file, and the rest happens almost automatically. This helps companies grow their fleets, try new ideas, and keep everything working smoothly, even as they handle more cars and services across different cities and countries.

This isn’t just about making life easier for engineers. It’s about making sure AVs are reliable and safe for everyone—riders, drivers, and people on the street. With better cloud systems, AVs can respond faster to new problems, roll out updates quickly, and keep personal data safe. This moves us one step closer to a world where smart vehicles are a normal part of everyday life.

Scientific Rationale and Prior Art

Provisioning resources in the cloud is not a new idea. Companies have been doing it for years, especially as web applications have grown more complex. Early on, setting up a database or a cache (which helps apps run faster) meant logging into cloud dashboards, clicking buttons, and following checklists. It was slow and error-prone.

To make things faster, “Infrastructure as Code” (IaC) tools like Terraform and Ansible appeared. These tools let you write instructions in files, telling the cloud what to build. This meant you could repeat setups, share them with your team, and keep track of changes. But these tools were often separate from the tools engineers used to manage the apps themselves. If you wanted to add a new database for a service, you might need to update several files in different places and make sure they all matched up.

At the same time, the world of “Platform as a Service” (PaaS) and “Kubernetes” grew. Kubernetes is a system that lets you run lots of apps, called containers, across many computers. It was designed to automate running code, restarting it if it fails, and scaling it up or down. Kubernetes made it easier to manage apps, but it didn’t solve the problem of setting up cloud resources outside of the cluster (like databases or storage buckets).

Some projects, like Helm, let you package up apps and their settings into charts, which made it easier to install apps on Kubernetes. YAML files became the language of choice for describing how apps should run. But again, connecting what happens inside Kubernetes (like running code) with what happens outside (like setting up a database) was tricky.

Crossplane tried to bridge this gap. It let you describe both inside and outside resources using the same language and tools. You could use Kubernetes to manage not just containers, but also databases, caches, and more in the cloud. Still, teams often had to handle secrets (like passwords and keys) by hand, and each team might do things a little differently, leading to confusion and sometimes mistakes.

In the AV space, these problems were even bigger because of the scale and need for safety. AV companies often had hundreds of services, each with their own needs. They might operate across many regions and clouds. Provisioning had to be fast, repeatable, and secure. If a service needed a new database or a new firewall rule, it had to be up and running quickly, with no missteps.

Securing secrets was a special challenge. You never want passwords or keys to end up in the wrong place. Secrets managers, like Vault, were created to store and share secrets safely. But tying together resource provisioning, app deployment, and secret management into a single, easy-to-use flow was still hard.

Past solutions worked, but they were often piecemeal. They required a lot of manual steps, custom scripts, and coordination across teams. There was a risk of drift, where what was running in the cloud did not match what the files said should be running. That could lead to outages or, worse, security problems.

This patent builds on all these earlier ideas but brings them together in a new, streamlined way. It combines the best parts of Kubernetes, Crossplane, Helm, and secrets management. It lets teams describe everything they need for a service—apps, databases, storage, security—in simple files. The system takes care of the rest, making sure everything is provisioned correctly, secrets are handled safely, and the right resources are set up in the right places, even across many cloud regions.

Invention Description and Key Innovations

Now let’s dive into what makes this invention stand out. Imagine you’re an engineer at a company rolling out new services for AVs. You want to deploy a new feature that needs a database, a cache, and some messaging topics. With this invention, you don’t have to write long scripts or fill out forms in cloud dashboards. Here’s how it works, step by step:

First, you create a simple file—called a service-specific file. This file lists all the resources your service needs: maybe a database, a cache, a special storage bucket, or a messaging topic. You don’t need to worry about the details of how to create each resource; you just say what you want.

Next, you create a values file. This file gives more details for each resource, like what size you want your database to be, which region it should live in, or any special settings. Importantly, if any of these resources need secrets—like a password or key—the values file includes a path that tells the system where to find those secrets in a special secrets manager.

Once you have these two files, you hand them to the system. The system is running on a cloud platform, inside a PaaS cluster. It reads your files and follows the instructions. If it sees that a secret is needed, it looks up the path in the values file, fetches the secret from the secrets manager, and plugs it in exactly where it’s needed—without ever showing it to anyone who shouldn’t see it.

After gathering the settings and secrets, the system uses tools like Helm (for app packaging) and Crossplane (for describing cloud resources) to deploy everything. This happens automatically. Your database, cache, storage, and messaging resources are created in the cloud, linked to your app, and set up in the right way, all at once.

If your company works in more than one region—maybe you have AVs in both New York and San Francisco—the system can handle that too. It knows which resources need to be created in each region and which can be shared. For example, some resources might be global, while others are local to a city or data center.

Another key part is that everything is described in files that are easy to read and edit (YAML files). These files can be tracked in source control, like Git. That means every change is recorded, can be reviewed, and can be rolled back if something goes wrong. It also means you can use “GitOps” practices, where changes to the files automatically trigger updates in the cloud.

Argo CD is another piece of the puzzle. It watches your files and makes sure what’s running in the cloud matches what the files say should be running. If something gets out of sync, it can fix it automatically. This keeps your systems reliable and reduces the risk of mistakes.

What about security? Secrets are always a weak point. This system makes sure secrets never have to be copied by hand or stored in unsafe places. The values file just points to a location in the secrets manager. Only the system fetches the secrets, and only when needed. This keeps passwords and keys out of source code and away from prying eyes.

The invention is also flexible. It works with different cloud providers (like Google Cloud, AWS, or Azure) and can handle many types of resources: databases, object stores, firewalls, accounts, and more. It lets you define new types of resources as your needs grow. And because it uses standard tools and formats, it’s easy for new team members to learn.

Let’s look at what happens when you want to add a new feature or scale up your fleet. You just edit your service-specific and values files, maybe to add a bigger database or an extra cache. You commit the changes, and the system does the rest. No long meetings, no manual setups, no risk of forgetting a step.

The key innovations are:

– A unified system that lets you describe everything your service needs (apps, databases, caches, secrets, etc.) in a simple, standard way.

– Automation that connects these descriptions to actual cloud resource creation, without manual steps.

– Tight integration with secrets management, so passwords and keys are always safe.

– Support for multiple cloud providers and multiple regions, making it easy to grow as your business grows.

– Use of standard tools (Helm, Crossplane, YAML, Argo CD) but in a way that ties them all together, so you don’t have to learn lots of different systems.

– Easy tracking and updating of changes, so you know exactly what’s running and can quickly fix problems.

All of this adds up to a system that makes provisioning resources for AV services fast, safe, and reliable. It cuts down on errors, saves time, and helps companies roll out new features or fix problems faster than ever before.

Conclusion

Provisioning cloud resources for autonomous vehicles is a big, complex job. Earlier systems were slow, risky, and hard to manage. This patent brings together the best ideas from cloud and app management, combining them into one smooth, secure, and easy-to-use system. By letting teams describe their needs in simple files and automating the rest, it makes it possible to scale AV services safely and quickly. It keeps secrets safe, works across different clouds and regions, and uses tools engineers already know. As AVs become a bigger part of our lives, inventions like this are key to making sure they’re reliable, secure, and ready for anything the future brings.

Click here https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/ and search 20250214605.