LAS VEGAS – Navigation app company HERE, in partnership with automaker BMW, showcased the latest in connected car technology at the annual Consumer Electronics Show. The Smart Finder app brings content – music, mapping, refueling and more – from a phone, through the cloud and straight to the dashboard.
HERE product manager of connected driving Jerome Beaurepaire told RCR Wireless News the goal is “to bring the content seamlessly from the phone to the head unit through our cloud services.”
From the HERE pavilion outside the Las Vegas Convention Center, Beaurepaire planned a route to the Hoover Dam, some 32 miles to the southeast, on his smartphone.
“Once I reach the car,” he said, “I turn on the engine, this information is passed over the cloud to the (vehicle) head unit and you can start navigating.”
The mapping tech can also assist in figuring out where you parked the car.
In that particular use case, the driver parks then turns the vehicle off. The parking location is passed from the vehicle, through the cloud and onto the smartphone.
Smart Finder can also make recommendations based on factors including preference for on- or off-street parking, willingness to walk a few blocks, sensitivity to price and the like.
That’s just one example of what Beaurepaire referred to as “smart recommendations.”
The same process can also assist with driver preferences on refueling.
“We learn, based on users’ preferences, when they feel comfortable refueling. If they want to wait until the last moment or if they’d rather have 100, 150 kilometers left. Based on this, we define a control zone and give people a recommendation based on this control zone.”
The recommendation can be based on whether the driver also looks for the lowest gas prices regardless of route preference or, for those unwilling to deviate, the closest on-route filling station.
HERE also featured a mapping software prototype that combines Nvidia’s powerful Tegra X1 graphics chip with its mapping engine.
“Many of the elements you see here are going to be gradually introduced into our product over the next year or so,” Juan Jativa-Villoldo, HERE auto SDK product manager, said.
Users can customize the map to visually display time of day based on ambient light or select a vintage feature reminiscent of old-school video games.
Looking to autonomous driving, the prototype features accurate lane-by-lane road mapping and a dynamic street-level representation of point-to-point navigation.
