Emebedded chips or connected car news tips come from NXP, Flex, Roke, Audi, Huawei, Toyota, INRIX, Hangery, Nissan and Denso this week.
Haptic Buttons for Automotive
Flex maker of Sketch-to-Scale solutions, and Aito, the leader haptic interface technology, have partnered to enhance the automotive user experience by embedding touch sensors with button-like tactile feedback into automotive applications such as overhead consoles, steering wheel controls and other vehicle interior applications.
Aito’s proprietary piezo-based technology provides haptic feedback to a user’s fingertip, making smooth surfaces feel as if they were embedded with physical buttons, knobs, shapes, edges or textures. By eliminating the need for physical buttons, this technology provides design freedom, enabling tactile controls to be integrated with high quality materials such as wood, leather or metal. Additionally, the technology significantly reduces weight and space requirements in automotive cabin design, reducing the required thickness of the sensor rack to under 0.4 millimeters.
3D Black Box to Learn from Accidents
Roke Manor Research (Roke) demonstrated the world’s first viable 3D ‘black box’ technology for vehicles, using just a single dashboard camera.
Fitted to an autonomous Toyota Prius, Roke demonstrated how data captured via vision processing technology could be used to provide a precise 3D reconstruction following a road incident. It’s set to offer insurers, drivers and, in the case of autonomous vehicles, manufacturers independent evidence of what happened. This will not just lead to safer vehicles but also help to build public trust in driverless vehicles.
LTE-V Testing
Audi AG, Deutsche Telekom AG, Huawei, Toyota Motor Europe and other car manufacturers are testing LTE-V. The technology, is seen as a potential enabler for road safety and traffic efficiency applications. The partners are conducting these trials on a section of the “digital A9 motorway test bed” near Ingolstadt, Germany.
Deutsche Telekom infrastructure has been specially equipped with LTE-V hardware from Huawei to support the trial scenarios. Audi AG, Toyota Motor Europe and other car manufacturers have equipped research cars with the LTE-V hardware developed by Huawei.
Based on the trial results and experience gained, the partners will provide input into the standards specifications for LTE-V. The partners are contributing also to requirements definition for later releases of the 3GPP project, which will aim to enable a wide range of emerging use cases from connected and automated driving to new mobility services in the 5G era from 2020.
INRIX Adds Road Performance & Visualization
INRIX, Inc., the world leader in connected car services and movement analytics, has announced a new portfolio of road performance and analytical visualization tools. “INRIX Roadway Analytics” is the first set of on-demand tools to be available in Europe and the Middle East that enables instant analysis of INRIX XD Traffic information via the cloud. The service offers an unprecedented level of access to highly precise information to better inform transport agencies when making key decisions on the performance of national and city road networks.
Hanergy Solar Cars
Hanergy Holding Group, the world’s leading thin-film solar power company, launched four full solar power vehicles at a grand ceremony themed “Disruptive Innovations Drive the Future” outside its headquarters in Beijing .
A sports car named “Hanergy Solar R” made its debut as Li Hejun, Board Chairman and CEO of Hanergy Holding Group, drove it around the venue in the spotlight. In his speech, Mr. Li elaborated on the advantages of thin-film solar cells such as light weight and flexibility, enabling the cells to be integrated into a variety of products such as cars, unmanned aerial vehicles, mobiles, backpacks and clothes. The full solar power vehicles making their debut showcase the latest achievements of Hanergy’s mobile energy strategy, he said.
Car Sales Via Twitter
Nissan has become the first automotive brand in Europe to sell a vehicle exclusively through the use of social networking site Twitter.
From first contact with the client to the final decision to purchase – just six days later – all communication between flagship Galician dealer Antamotor and customer Raul Escolano took place digitally via the social media platform.known to the dealership as user @escolano, he first courted car companies using the hashtag #compraruncocheportwitter (in English, ‘buy a car on Twitter’).
Escolano threw down the gauntlet to automotive brands across Spain, challenging them to support him in buying a vehicle, solely through the use of social networks.
Nissan, via leading franchisee Antamotor in A Coruña, impressed Mr. Escolano with its innovative approach, using popular new platform Periscope to film the X-Trail, with the dealer presenting all of the vehicle’s key features in a personalised walk-through which was uploaded to a live stream.
Nissan then went head-to-head with rival models in a poll on Twitter, posed by Mr. Escolano, in which followers were asked to rate the cars on the shortlist. The survey, which received 2.6 million impressions (source: Brandwatch), ranked X-Trail ahead of its rivals with 43% of the vote, effectively helping Nissan to seal the deal.
In the spirit of the truly innovative purchase, keys to the X-Trail were delivered direct to Mr. Escolano’s home by courier, to complete the online transaction.
IEEE Honors DENSO
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) awarded DENSO the IEEE Medal for Environmental and Safety Technologies for being the first company in the world to commercialize an electronically controlled injection system (diesel common rail), which has made a significant contribution to the spread of clean diesel vehicles.
NXP & Cohda V2X In China
NXP Semiconductors and Tongji University announced their support for the launch and implementation of China’s first ever large-scale road test initiative for intelligent connected vehicles through the NXP-Tongji University Joint Lab. As part of the Shanghai Intelligent and Connected Vehicle Demonstration Program, the road testing initiative will serve as a foundation for China’s development of smart transportation and vehicle-to-vehicle communications standards.
NXP and its partner Cohda Wireless will provide secure vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) communications technology for cars and roadside infrastructure. Road testing will collect V2X communications data in real time from multiple test scenarios, including measures of active safety, traffic management and information services.
Innova Electronics Corporation has acquired Aftermarket Telematics Technologies, LLC. Aftermarket Telematics Technologies is a provider of Web-based automotive telematics software and services for the automotive aftermarket, making it easy to manage connected vehicles from anywhere.
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