Wandering around CES this year, you might be tricked into thinking you were at an international car show. The number of automotive companies that now head to Las Vegas at the beginning of the year is growing as electronics become a far larger part of the car. So although there is a plethora of consumer electronic devices on show, from TVs and washing machines, to wearable tech and drones, you're never that far from a car.
Audi has made a big splash at CES for a number of years, and 2016 was no different. The German company was keen to highlight what it's doing with its cabin technologies, and how it is bringing buyers the most advanced screen and processor technology available to the driver. You only had to look at the firm's second-generation virtual cockpit, which uses active matrix OLED (AMOLED) technology. This has allowed the engineers at the car company to design screens that are lighter, more energy efficient, and curved. It's likely to be used in Audi A8 super luxury saloon from 2017.
Perhaps most interesting is that Audi is moving away from Nvidia chips to power its infotainment systems, and is shifting to Qualcomm's Snapdragon technology.
The chip firm will supply both the 820 and 602A versions of the family to Audi. On its booth, Qualcomm had the 820 processor powering a 4k central screen running at 30fps and a near 1080p instrument cluster running at 60fps at the same time. The horsepower that car companies are demanding is increasing with every vehicle.
Other car manufacturers were there too, Kia had setup demonstrations of its UVO 3 infotainment system which uses a 7” LCD touchscreen display and is compatible with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. In the future however Kia has some interesting ideas for its systems. The firm also showed its next-generation Novo system it features: a 3D digital hologram instrument display, gesture recognition and a fingerprint touchpad which can set the cabin up with an individuals preferences. And it's these future technologies that are of most interest.
Which is why it's more interesting to walk around the supplier stands rather than the car makers. Take Harman for example, you've probably heard of the firm's speaker and headphones, and it's JBL brand, but the company does a lot more than that.
Harman has worked with the whacky concept vehicle people at Rinspeed to develop an autonomous car of the future. Ignoring the drone that's landed on the Etos' boot, Harman has had a huge hand in developing its cabin technologies, most of which at least have one foot in reality – so we could see them in everyday road cars in the not too distant future.
It starts with the scalable computer platform, which can be adapted to the needs of different vehicle segments, moving through to modular connectivity solutions, providing high-speed networking interface for connectivity both inside and outside the car, delivering connected services such as weather, parking and reservations.
The Etos also has a camera-based advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), which monitors, records and assesses the surroundings of the entire vehicle. Multiple ultra-high resolution displays that can be used in varying configurations to support the best infotainment and entertainment intelligent use case scenarios; in the Etos that means two curved, 4K 21.5” widescreen monitors and a central HD display that present relevant information to the driver and their copilots.
And as the car is autonomous it also offers a complete office suite so you can remain productive even while you're in the cabin, including the ability to video conference.
And as cars become better connected we started to ask more questions about safety and anti-hacking systems. To this end Harman's 5+1 safety architecture with hypervisor and firewall could come into its own allowing for over-the-air updates, which help to protect the connected car from outside threats. (There'll be a lot more from Harman in the next issue of AutoConnect_Magazine).
But there were other companies with lots on show too. Visteon, perhaps someone you've never heard of, considers CES to be its most important show of the year, and because of that the company has a whole host of technologies on show from a full range of digital instrument clusters and head-up displays to a scaleable cockpit controller that can house processor technology with anything from two- to 16-cores. (This is another company to look out for in future issues of the magazine.
Two more companies stand out from this year's show. The first, Bosch, more people will know about as they develop a huge range of technologies including white goods such as washing machines. But for the future of infotainment have possibly designed the most obvious of technologies, especially considering the number of touchscreens in cars nowadays – haptic feedback.
Touchscreens are a real bugbear of mine; they work fine on your phone because you're devoting all your attention to it, but when you're driving you need to look at the road so you need to know where your fingers are, and if you are pressing buttons, otherwise you may be tempted to look down. That could be overly distracting and dangerous.
When touched, the display responds with haptic elements as well as visual and acoustic signals. Drivers can feel the keys on the touchscreen without looking thanks to variances in the surface structures – and without immediately triggering an action. Rough, smooth, or even patterned surfaces stand for different buttons and functions. The virtual button is not activated until the operator presses it more firmly. Users have the feeling that they are pressing a normal, mechanical button. In appearance, however, the touch screen with haptic elements does not differ from a conventional display.
Lastly, Nvidia, brought its Drive PX 2 autonomous vehicle super computer to the show, (see pages 14-15), highlighting how powerful processor technology is going to help take the stress out of driving. Imagine a system that can learn how to drive, so every time you're out on the road in your autonomous car, it gets smoother. Volvo will be using the technology in 100 fully autonomous XC90 SUVs on the streets of Gothenburg soon, and interest in the system is huge.
"Qualcomm had the 820 processor powering a 4k central screen running at 30fps and a near 1080p instrument cluster running at 60fps at the same time"
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