Friday, March 18, 2011

Automotive goes open source - March 18th


By Thomas Buchner, a Solution Architect and Technology Manager for Automotive at Teleca

Automotive Industry finally looking at open platforms

With apps and open platforms used everywhere from mobile phones to tablets and set top boxes, the automotive industry finally is also considering open platforms as a basis of their infotainment products.

Traditionally infotainment systems were built on closed source systems like Windows Automotive or QNX. More and more of Teleca's automotive customers ask explicitly in their RFQs for Linux based alternatives like Android or MeeGo.

The reasons are many-fold:
  • Reduced royalties for licenses
  • Chance to source from multiple vendors
  • Last but not least the need to have a platform with a large developer base.
While these reasons are perfectly valid, some lessons learned in the mobile industry need to be applied to the automotive industry as well:

Open Source software comes not for free. To build a successful product, a strong partner that is capable to create a solid baseline from public available sources is required. More so for automotive products with their increased demands on safety and reliability.

To make full use of the open platform, a dedicated SDK needs to be created that unleashes the functionality of the platform to developers.

The platform, be it Android or MeeGo must be adapted to the underlying hardware to provide a compelling user experience for scenarios like multi screen multimedia content viewing, e.g. viewing HD video on the rear seats while the driver is guided by the voice controlled navigation system.

Teleca heads these developments together with partners and customers. Are you interested in more info see us at next automotive event, SAE2011»

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