I had the opportunity to spend time with Visteon this week at both the Telematics Munich and Electronica events. They were showcasing a wide range of visionary solutions for the automotive market to aide in the realization of connected car and autonomous driving solutions.
Visteon touches many requirements along the road to those in vehicle solutions. In reviewing their diagram of the components of an end-to-end solution, they work in all of the areas highlighted in orange. This includes content delivery networks and operator services on the connectivity side of the discussion and apps, infotainment and 4G LTE wireless gateway functionality on the connected cockpit side of the discussion.
The breadth of Visteon’s portfolio is too extensive to discuss in one article, so for the purposes of today’s piece we will focus on the key demos shared with RCR Wireless at Electronica.
The Centerpiece Concept demonstration showed how to share information between the center console screen and the driver cluster display via hand motions. Not actually touching the screens but motioning in front of them to share data back and forth. How this plays with the concept of keeping two hands on the wheel at all times (which we all know we don’t really do for the most part) is unknown, but certainly an interesting concept. This is currently available for RFP/RFQ discussions with OEMs.
The Fusion Connected Platform will be featured in 2018 European vehicle lines. The concept behind this platform is to fuse driver information, infotainment and cloud connectivity. From a driver perspective, what is different about this solution is that it combines vehicle diagnostic and safety information and personal information from the cloud in one interface.
In collaboration with Renault there was the Connected Cockpit Concept related to autonomous driving. The functionality enables human-machine interaction of voice, touch and displays. One example shown in the demo was the ability to have a video conference via a heads-up display while in autonomous mode and shift to a voice conference without losing the call when changing the car back to a traditional drive mode.
The following video clips provide more information for each of these demos:
Even though this all feels a little like living in the Jetsons’ era when I see these demos, it’s an incredibly exciting space to be a part of and I can’t wait to see what’s next.
