Superficially, instrument clusters appear much the same today as they did 30 years ago, but they have changed extensively in that time and they are likely to change even more by 2010. Matthew Beecham reports on how the humble speedo has become a hot-bed of technical wizardry.
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In the 1960s, instruments were mechanically driven. By the 1980s, most were electronic. “The biggest change throughout the 1990s was the trend towards multiplexed systems in vehicles,” said Doug Burcicki, senior manager, marketing and product management, Yazaki North America.
“This drove the evolution of the cluster from gathering discrete data from remote sensors – during the 1980s — to the fully digital implementations we see today. About 30 years ago clusters were based on primitive mechanical and electro-mechanical designs whereas today the digital nature of the componentry allows for a more accurate movement mechanism as well as a greater proliferation of information, whether it is displayed through gauges or displays.”
The number of instruments has increased over the years as vehicles have become more complex and the instruments themselves have become cheaper. The big increase, however, has been in event-controlled indications, such as lights which actuate to show warnings for indicators, low oil pressure and high lighting beam.
“Based on our consumer studies in terms of what people want from their vehicle instrumentation, there are three major points to note,” said Georg Nentwig, driver information product marketing manager, Visteon Corp. “First, the information displayed should be easy to read. Second, the cluster should be stylish, perhaps achieved by adding more colourful back illumination. Third, the information should be personalized, enabling, say, drivers to change the size and colour of their instrument cluster in the same way they can change their PC or mobile phone preferences.”
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By GlobalData“[It is also important] to be able to have the right instrumentation at the right place and to integrate different products in such a way that they are easy for people to use,” said Philippe Aumont, director, product planning, Faurecia.
“So our role as a cockpit integrator and instrument panel manufacturer is to be able to create the right environment in order to integrate new products such as navigation systems, mobile telephones or MP3 players The key question today is: will all these features become resident in the car or will they become portable? It seems that there is no final answer on that yet.”
While conventional displays and gauges incorporate back-lit panels with incandescent lamps as light sources, and pointers that have been treated with phosphorescent additives to glow in the dark, there is still a major shift toward the greater use of LEDs as light sources.
“Today 90% of clusters are lit with LEDs, the applications that make use of phosphorescence are niche applications and still require a primary light source such as LEDs,” added Dutch Adachi, senior manager, display technology group, electronic and instrumentation business unit, Yazaki North America. “The use of LEDs will continue to grow as more colour variants become affordable enough to be applied to the automotive environment and this is mainly due to the light efficiency, design flexibility and life of the product.”
“Compared to incandescent and fluorescent lamps, LEDs require less power consumption and do not contain environmentally hazardous substances,” said Satoshi Sugiura, senior manager, body electronics components engineering department, Denso Corp.
“Denso uses LEDs for all light sources used in instrument clusters. Last September, we introduced our new instrument cluster for the Lexus LS460 using a TFT display. For the TFT display, Denso developed a new backlight unit using high-luminance LEDs. It is the first in the world to use the LED for an instrument cluster’s TFT display. We think that LEDs will continue to be the mainstream for light sources in instrument clusters, and that their luminance will further increase.”
There is also a trend in the West toward the increasing use of self-illuminating displays based on organic and inorganic materials which eliminate the need for separate back-lighting. “Organic display technology can significantly add contrast and enhancement, resulting in a really crisp display,” said Nentwig. “While the technology has improved, organic displays are still expensive compared to LCD or TFT technology. If the price level [of organic displays] were to fall, it would become an excellent substitution technology.”
The growing number of car functions and accompanying control elements mean designers and ergonomic experts face an increasingly difficult task. While these comfort, information and entertainment features are seen as opportunities for adding value and individual character to vehicle interiors, there is a limited amount of installation space available within easy reach of the driver and front seat passenger.
Touch screens with built-in information and operating components may be the answer to this challenge. Yet this technology, which is a familiar feature of many other application areas, has not made much headway in vehicle interiors to date, with the exception of a few navigation systems.
“While some OEMs will never consider a touch screen due to the driver distraction issue, others are more open to putting touch screens into the vehicle as a control input method,” said Pearse Keane, driver information product strategy and planning senior manager, Visteon Corp. “Although it is a question of the safety philosophy of the OEMs, their solutions are developing quickly so I think you will see more touch screens.”
“The benefit of touch screens is that the same real estate can be utilised as the HMI [human-machine interface] for multiple subsystems, such as HVAC, audio, and navigation,” added Burcicki. “Touch screens are prevalent in Europe and Japan and this is because of the popularity of navigation systems in these regions, realistically, they are just about the only way to input the level of information these systems require, other than voice.
“One aspect of touch screens that is not popular, particularly in North America, is they lack tactile feedback, thus making them non-optimal for ‘blind’ operations. As a result you will often find their functionality is duplicated via hard/soft switches thus the true benefits of the real estate savings are not realized. Another challenge to touch screens is the ‘depth’ of the menu, if not structured properly instead of simplifying the HMI they complicate it and frustrate the users.”
Is voice recognition the answer to that in order to eliminate many controls that have traditionally been manually operated?
Adachi added: “In a perfect world, yes, but in reality the error rate is still too high for most consumers and this results in a level of frustration thus unpopularity. Tremendous progress has been made over the past five years but there are still a couple of issues slowing the adoption of this technology, the first being cost – it takes a lot of processing power [via software and hardware] to address echo cancellation, noise filtering and improved recognition rates. Also the systems of today need the users to speak in an unnatural manner through the use of keywords rather than in a natural linguistic manner; you have to learn to speak in a specific way in order to get the system to execute your commands reliably.”
Magneti Marelli believes that to save space and minimise driver distraction, the auto industry needs to design intelligent, intuitive interfaces based on sensor, speech, display and haptic technologies that are embedded in the vehicle.
“Voice recognition systems are key components to ensure reliable control interfaces for using sophisticate functions in vehicles and simplify the search for specific content,” said Fabrizio Righetti, Head of Marketing and Sales of Magneti Marelli Sistemi Elettronici.
“[We have already introduced] speech-activated control of in-car devices, such as entertainment or navigation system in a number of car models, and we expect that this will increase as technology improves and complexity of devices increases. A major motivation of speech-controlled devices is to minimise driver distraction. Driving is a hands-busy, eyes-busy activity, and fiddling with dials or manually entering a destination into a navigation system has the potential to drastically distract the driver from the most important task at hand, i.e. driving safely. Typical speech recognition techniques, like command and control, key word spotting and rule-based approaches may not fit well as the user must keep in mind too many commands. We are working on a Natural Language Dialog Based approach that allows the user to ask the system in its more natural way.”
In anyone’s language, it is clear that driver attitudes are changing when it comes to applying technology to help them become better drivers. Drivers want more information to make them better behind the wheel, but with style in mind. In addition to the speedo, tomorrow’s cluster will likely feature customizable, stylish dials and gauges and more information about what’s going on around the vehicle.
Matthew Beecham
just-auto Research Report: Global market review of vehicle instrumentation and cockpits – forecasts to 2012
