[Webinar] Automotive Media Management in Future IVI Systems

© Integrated Computer Solutions, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Automotive Media Management
in Future IVI Systems
Roland Krause Ph.D., Director of Engineering
www.ics.com
1

Leaving the Driver Seat
Profound changes in how people experience Automotive Transportation
• Car ownership percentage among 16-34 year olds is still on a declining path
2

Some Trends in the Automotive Market
There is a discussion about whether car sharing is replacing ownership!
• Car sharing changes how we view and interact with transportation
• It drives new and different use cases and expectations
• Ride Apps, advertising options, etc..
• Among 18- to 24-year-olds, 64% said they expected their vehicle’s technology
to be able to do all the things that a smartphone can do; that compared with
56% of Gen X respondents*
Add to that changes in technology such as driver assist and fully
autonomous driving
3
*Source: Cox Automotive

Consequences for In-Vehicle-Infotainment
Shared automotive experience
• While it doesn’t really matter which car comes to pick you up it still matters to
have a consistent user experience
• Convenient, easy, flexible and fast adapting to new technologies, trends and
applications
• ByoD, wearables, etc. require much faster updates and more intelligence in an
automobile
• Convergence of ubiquitous technologies is mandatory
• unless one of them will replace the car IVI altogether
4

Steps to Autonomous Driving - Level 2
5
• Driver is disengaged from
physically operating the vehicle.
• The driver must still always be
ready to take control of the
vehicle.
• This does not open significantly
different infotainment options,
however improved convergence
and integration options are likely
to bring value for all passengers
of vehicles

Steps to Autonomous Driving - Level 3
6
• Completely shift "safety-critical
functions" to the vehicle.
• Under certain traffic or
environmental conditions.
• Driver is still present and will
intervene if necessary, but is not
required to monitor the
situation in the same way as for
previous levels.

Steps to Autonomous Driving - Level 4+
• Fully autonomous.
• Vehicles designed to perform all
safety-critical driving functions
and monitor roadway conditions
for an entire trip.
• Limited to the "operational
design domain (ODD)"
• At level 5 the vehicle's
performance is expected to
equal that of a human driver, in
every driving scenario.
7

© Integrated Computer Solutions, Inc. All Rights Reserved 8
(In) vehicle experience is now
distinguishing factor as horse power
no longer matters

New Opportunities Determine Requirements
for Vehicle Entertainment
9

Common Functionality
Common to all levels is that
the IVI still needs to provide
functionality to interact with
the vehicle
• HVAC
• Interior such as lighting,
seats, doors and windows
• Controlled by touchscreens
or voice, similar to smart
homes
10
“Alexa, set the front temperature to 72 degrees.”

Scenarios for Levels 4 and 5
Medium rides - Less than an hour
○ Example - Commuting
● Solo or with likely known people
● Likely to want personalized entertainment options
○ Commuters might want a ‘virtual desk’
Long rides
● Road trip, commercial transport
● Almost certain to want personalized entertainment
11

Prototype Implementation
• ICS developed an In-Vehicle-Infotainment Prototype based on automotive
hardware and middleware
• Modern UI, Plugin based architecture, easily customizable and extendable
• Features a rich Media Stack
• BYOD Music, Bluetooth Connectivity, Navigation, Rear Seat Entertainment
and much more
• Already had remote control capabilities from speech recognition module
• Ideal for fast prototyping of the Connected Car scenario
12

Media Management
• At ICS we have designed and built many In-Vehicle-Infotainment systems
• When asked to look into Media Management we found this to be a vexing and
complex problem
• The challenge for automotive IVI implementations is:
• People’s media -- their music, videos, audiobooks, podcasts and television -- exist in
a multitude of forms and originate from many disparate sources
• For example, some music files may reside at home in an iTunes library, others may
have been purchased from Amazon Music or Google Play
• Since most media is never downloaded to a computer or a USB drive, it is retrieved
through a phone, hence seamless Bluetooth is the most important option!
13

Requirements
The job of finding and making available media to the passengers of a car is
that of the Media Manager
• First step: Recognizing a Device is brought into the car
• Next: Finding and Indexing Media on the Device
• Possibly: Enhancing Media Information to allow improved search,
filtering, etc.
• Definitely: Playing of Media using the car’s advanced audio systems
• Controlling the flow of Media to e.g. different speaker zones, headphone
jacks, videos to headrest screens etc.
14

Requirements (continued)
• When multiple occupants drive in the car each individual should be able
to enjoy their own audio and video selections.
• Hence a media manager should be able to direct media to specific
passengers.
15

Challenges
• Differences in lifecycles
• Cars, consumer devices, phones, home automation
• Different development times
• Dictated by regulation, consumer expectations:
car life cycle (>10 years)
• Automotive and mobile industries have very different objectives
• Consumer acceptance
• Depends on significant lifestyle improvements
• Balanced with costs and marketing strategies
16

The Idea - Coding for the Unknown
Today’s media consumers behavior changes rapidly:
• Remember the “Walkman” - Enjoyed it for Decades
• CDs - Lasted maybe 10 years
• MP3s on CDs, USB Pendrives, Less than 5 years
• Cloud based music sharing, Amazon tbd.
• Pandora, by all means not saying it’s dead but:
• Spotify, is the current Darling (< 2 years)
• The cycles become shorter and shorter
• Consumers change phones 2-3 years on average
• We must keep in mind that what we create might be partially outdated by
the time is is released - Ouch!
17

Possible Solutions
• Use a Mobile Phone or Tablet OS in the Car
• Use a Web Technology Based Stack in the Car
• Design an Open Standards based, Car specific OS and create a system of
plugins and components with open interfaces that can be easily updated
• Architecture of the ICS Media Manager follows this idea
18

Architecture

Plugin Architecture
Media Manager Core Functionality
• Load Plugins:
• Device Manager
• Media Devices
• Media Players
• Services (Audio Manager, Media Enrichment)
• Controllers (UI, RC, RVI)
• Organize Flow of Media Info Data from Device to Player and Device to
Controller
20

Media Devices

Device Manager Plugin Interface
/** DeviceManagerInterface is a Plugin Interface for DeviceManagers
* that detect MediaDevices which contain Media that can be indexed
* by a suitable MediaDevice.
**/
class DeviceManagerInterface : public QObject
{
Q_OBJECT
public:
explicit DeviceManagerInterface(QObject * parent=0) : QObject(parent) {}
virtual ~DeviceManagerInterface() {}
signals:
void deviceCreated(const QString mediaDeviceType, const QUrl mediaDevicePath) const;
void deviceRemoved(const QString mediaDeviceType, const QUrl mediaDevicePath) const;
};
#define DeviceManagerInterface_iid "com.ics.media-manager.DeviceManagerInterface"
Q_DECLARE_INTERFACE(DeviceManagerInterface, DeviceManagerInterface_iid)
22

ICS-Terra
Build Better User Experiences
Faster
23

Terra provides rapid development tools and
reusable code for building interfaces within a
standardized architecture
• Architecture
• Software
• Proven Process
• ICS People
24

Architecture
Terra features layered design

Architecture
Benefits of Layered Design
• User interface can be tested independently
• Supporting layers can be tested independently
Why it matters
Layered design makes testing more efficient, which improves quality and
saves money.
Example:
Spray
Application
26

Architecture facilitates flexible, efficient development

Terra offers many benefits —
Architecture brings all of the pieces together
• Reusable code
• Roles/assignment of tasks
• Flexible development timeline
• Division of ICS & client responsibilities
Why it matters
With all of these pieces in place, client captures full benefits of Terra— lower
costs, higher quality and reduced risk.

• Common graphic elements
• Common functionality
• Code can be configured for target environment
Why it matters
Reusable code lowers cost and risk.
Software
Terra software enables ICS to streamline
development of touchscreen interfaces
Example:
RT Graphing
Library
29

Software
Terra software components
• State machine authoring tool
• Enhancements and extensions to Qt and Qt Quick
• Utilities & management tools
• Integration with common embedded technologies
30

Software
ICS enhancements and extensions to Qt
provide important features at very low cost
• We are the Qt experts
• Projects in every vertical market, especially auto & medical
• Training and coaching
• Terra distills best practices refined over hundreds of projects
• More cost-effective than pure custom development
• Proven software — fewer bugs, easier testing, less work
• Engineers are more productive
31

Software
Qt Extensions: Theming
• QtQuick.Controls 2.0 come with Qt
• Android and Microsoft Themes out of the box
• Hard to add or tweak your own theme
• Terra extends
• Configurable via simple QML files
• Changing the look of buttons, pickers, etc is easy
• Support for night/day, blue vs. red, etc
• Can reload UI at runtime
32

Software
Qt Extensions: Internationalization
• Qt Provides extensive support for i18n
• Terra Extends
• Extra skeleton to make i18n seamless during development
• Add and verify translations as you go
• Generates test translations
• Generates font metrics and areas available to text to grow
• Prevents translators from creating strings that are too long to fit
33

Software
Qt Extensions: Documentation
• Doxygen tools document API
• Terra extends
• How is this feature implemented?
• How the parts fit together?
• What is the code “supposed to do”
34

Software
Utilities & Management Tools
• Logging
• Event tracking and reporting
• Automatic updates
• Access to web content
• Streaming media

Software
Integration with Embedded Technologies
• Controller libraries
• Device drivers
• Embedded development tools
36

• ICS has developed touch interfaces on across devices and industries
• ICS is the world’s largest independent supplier of Qt services
• Our experience provides tangible value to customers
• Reduced risk
• Understand tradeoffs
• Create rapid prototypes
Why it matters
It is well established that a programmer’s effort exponentially decreases as
his/her experience increases, reducing cost and risk.
Process
37

• All the disciplines
• Software Architect, Project Manager, Engineer
• Human Factors, Visual Designer, Graphic Designer, UX Designer
• Can tap expertise as needed
• Team-based approach
Why it matters
People have the skills & experience required, so work gets done faster.
Problems are discovered and solved earlier, reducing cost and risk.
People
38

Terra for IVI

What is Next?
• Automotive industry is at the center of a paradigm shift
• Demand for connected lifestyle is evident
• Must keep up with the pace of developing mobile and home automation
ecosystems
• Automotive industry could separate shareable components from
differentiating value propositions
• Joint development of common, shareable components based on open
standards
• Provides the platform to hold pace with development cycles of mobile
industry
• Autonomous mobility will accelerate demand for connected lifestyle
40

Questions?
www.ics.com
41

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