2. In-car technology

Scenario: You are driving along in a new car. Consider the limitations of the ICT equipment in that car and what may come along to improve them even further.

First of all consider the typical ICT items in a car such as

  • CD Player
  • Radio
  • Display systems
  • Emergency equipment
  • Information and entertainment services

Now consider the limitations of each one and suggest what new things will come along to improve matters:

Car equipment
Limitation of ICT Possible improvement
Music: A CD player is very awkward to use in a car, especially whilst driving. There are multi-disk players but they are a hassle to load. Your CDs are awkward to store and they may even be stolen. Car makers such as Ford may stop including a CD player as standard. Instead, they will provide an 'infotainment module'. This allows you to connect your own personal music player via USB or other connectors. For example, connect an iPod device or memory stick. When you leave the car, you simply take them with you.
Custom settings: Equipment such as the radio, seats, steering wheel, mirror, air con settings and so on, all take a lot of effort and time to set up to your own taste. But then another person using the car has to adjust them to suit their preferences. Keyless entry is already a feature on many premium cars, the fob communicates with the car to open the door and allow the engine to start. In the near future your personal fob will be used to configure the various systems to your custom settings - radio will be set to your own stations, seats, steering wheel, mirrors will move accordingly, the air con will be set to your preference and so on.
Display systems. There is a severe space limitation on the dash for displays and yet the driver and front passenger have different needs. For example the passenger may like to watch a DVD or TV but for safety's sake the driver will need to concentrate on the road and look at the sat nav Lenticular display can display entirely different images depending on the angle at which they are viewed. This property allows the passenger to view a film on the same display that is showing the driver the sat nav map. Furthermore, 'heads-up' displays may come along that display a virtual image on the windscreen in front of the driver showing vital information and perhaps danger points such as a pedestrian about to step off the pavement. The system may also include infra-red that lets the driver see through fog or night vision to spot people in the dark.
Emergency: At the moment there is virtually nothing that lets the emergency services know that you are in a car accident. Furthermore, there is virtually no stored data within the car to help investigators at a later date. An Event Data Recorder or EDR may become common on new cars. It constantly records the last 30 seconds or so of all vital car data - brake pedal pressure, steering wheel position, speed and so on. In the event of an accident, this can be interrogated by authorised personnel to see what was happening just prior to the accident.An emergency car system may be included that sends an automatic signal via GSM phone channels to the emergency services. For example, if an air bag is deployed, a message containing your GPS co-ordinates are sent to the ambulance service along with a prediction of your likely level of injuries. It does this by tappinng into various car sensors to detect how severe the crash was, from that, it predicts likely injury level and warns medical staff before they arrive.
Merging information. At the moment, the radio uses one technology, the phone uses another. This does not make it simple to expand the possibilites for other information and entertainment services. The lowish bandwidth (and cost) over a phone's 3G system is also a limitation for more services. 4G wireless technology will offer much higher bandwidth, making it more practical to stream data to a car on the move. For example there are already thousands of internet radio channels and there is VOIP for making phone calls. TV on demand is also coming along. So in the future the radio may simply take a digital feed from the internet - vast choice of stations and no more fiddling with re-tuning as you move from one part of the country to another. This IP (Internet Protocol) based technology makes it possible for the car driver and passengers to use many more services that are only possible from home at the moment.

 

challenge see if you can find out one extra fact on this topic that we haven't already told you

Click on this link: Car infotainment in the future