Despite the smooth lines and simple appearance, the cockpit is one of the most complicated and tightly packaged assemblies in a vehicle. Matthew Beecham reports on some novel ways in which to display more information yet make the cockpit appear less complex.
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The engineering challenge: clutter-free cockpits
The cockpit may contain 50% of the total vehicle wiring system and most of the vehicle functions are controlled from this area. With several hundred individual components, it is also one of the most common sources of quality problems. The standard of design and manufacture is therefore critical.
“We work on innovative concepts to make the essential information to the driver effectively available,” said Thomas Beer, senior product business manager, Johnson Controls. “For example, we developed an analog instrument cluster with various types of information. This information can be changed by pushing the displays up or down. This means that besides speed, navigational and other information can also be displayed in the instrument cluster. This technology can display information purely in analog form, analog and digital combined or exclusively digital images.”
As the information flood spills out of the home and office into the vehicle, is there a danger of overloading the driver? Indeed, what information is most relevant and where should it be located? “Besides the traditional information available, additional safety-related systems such as camera and sensor-based messages are becoming more relevant, recognised and valued by the end consumer,” said Dimitri Baudon, product manager, Yazaki North America, Inc. “The real estate in front of the driver is limited. How should the information be broken down between a cluster location, a center stack, head-up display and rear-view mirror? At this point, we see each OEM trying to define where the information should go. Total solution providers like Yazaki can support related HMI [Human Machine Interface] studies and make recommendations on which information – i.e. graphic symbol — should go where. Yazaki has the advantage of a Virtual Reality Lab where we simulate different systems and locations and evaluate how the driver processes and reacts to the overwhelming quantity of information.”
Now appearing on a touch screen near you
The desire for a spacious interior, something always equated with luxury, is prompting interior designers to use new combinations of electronics and mechanical functions to modify or move pre-existing systems like heating/cooling and audio facilities. In terms of controls, touch screens offer space-saving possibilities, but designers are faced with the problem of distracting the driver’s attention too much.
Baudon added: “Touch screen technology is not new but has made a major break through in the past few years. The touch screen application for centre stack display is definitely one way to improve the HMI, but it does not appeal to every driver. Therefore the integration of such solutions is very much brand dependant.”
Beer notes that touch screens have not made much headway in European automotive interiors so far – with the exception of a few navigation systems. “We have developed a new technology that enables the use of touch screen displays in automotive interiors. Unlike other touch screens to date, this innovation works without the need for expensive foil layers on the glass display. Instead, an advanced version of the traditional LCD technology allows a sensor mechanism to be incorporated directly into the glass. The special layout of the LCD has several sensitive areas where finger positions can be detected by capacitive effect. Foil-free display screens also offer other benefits, which include being high brightness and better cost-effectiveness than other touch screen systems. Not only that – the integration of information and operating functions within one component reduces the number of controls required in the cockpit. This cuts down the complexity and at the same time increases the level of creative freedom that can now be applied to the interior design.”
Alpine displays the future
Displays are advancing in other ways, too. Jaguar’s latest concept car, C-XF, offers driver and front seat passengers the opportunity to see an entirely different image on the car’s display. The technology, supplied by Alpine, allows passengers to watch a DVD or game whilst the driver can only see the navigation. “Dual View allows designers to make the screen a more prominent feature of the in-car experience because it allows the front seat passenger to have full functionality while the driver is restricted to a safe level of vehicle information,” said Alpine’s UK managing director, Dave Sheen. “I can see possibilities offering a gaming environment for example, or in-car cinema, features previously only available in the rear.” Using a parallax barrier, light from the backlight is divided into the individual viewing cones for passenger and driver. Alpine’s engineers have defined an optimum position from the screen, 30 degrees from the centre line as ideal for the eye point for each occupant. The Jaguar C-XF installation uses a 262,144 colour amorphous silicon TFT, 17.7 cm (7 inches) across, a size now typical in this segment of vehicle. Alpine says that its Dual View could also simplify rear screen entertainment requiring a single screen to allow to back seat occupants watch difference sources.
Since 1978, Alpine has been pushing back the boundaries of in-car entertainment, producing some of the world’s most advanced audio systems, on-board navigation and multimedia applications. In explaining the challenges of integrating consumer devices into the car, Alpine’s UK OEM manager, Keith Price, told us: “There are three main challenges. First, how to operate the device safely in the car while moving. Second, how to connect the device to the current architecture. And finally, there are other integration issues such as EMC [Electro Magnetic Compatibility], charging and software upgrades. Looking at safety first, it is not practical to operate an MP3 player directly in the car; you need to hold it, see the display and particularly with MP3 players, you need to be able to scroll through thousands of tracks. Alpine was the first manufacturer to have a fully integrated solution for the iPod and we continue to refine this. Connecting the device to the car needs care. Does the OEM want to transfer data from the device to the car or connect by wire or wirelessly? Wireless maybe more convenient but it brings EMC issues. Consumer devices are not tested to the same levels as in-vehicle devices and we have consequently witnessed difficulties in-car. The growing importance of EMC led Alpine to invest in a full vehicle size test chamber in Coventry that allows us to test two cars side by side to detect interaction issues between vehicles.”
Baudon added: “The challenge [of integrating consumer devices into the car] resides in designing a seamless interface, where the car becomes the ‘brain’ – i.e. command/voice — and the personal device becomes the ‘servant’. The vehicle ‘brain’ has to manage the multimedia environment and prioritize the information in case of emergency. The Ford Sync System is the first good example and we expect to see similar solutions to spread widely on the market in the coming years.”
It’s good to talk
Some designers are looking to voice recognition devices to enable them to eliminate many controls that have traditionally been manually operated. Although voice recognition systems continue to develop, they are proving more complex than originally thought, due to the complex ambient sound environment of the car. A major problem facing developers is in getting a clean audio signal for the driver’s voice and not from a passenger. More complex solutions require more powerful processing capability, now being offered by processors
“Voice commands and feedback offer another solution,” said Price. “Our systems available in the US are able to recognise hundreds of commands, repeating the functions and providing confirmation without the driver taking his or her eyes from the road or hands from the wheel. Text-to-speech engines are becoming less ‘robotic’ sounding, creating a better interface for the customer. Alpine is working on gesture recognition, a technology where hand and eye movement can be used to control features. This has huge potential – it can control a diverse range of functions without the operator touching the hardware. The technology faces challenges, notably the four-dimensional nature of human movement. For example, the same gesture can vary greatly from person to person, culture to culture and sometimes even from the same individual depending on mood. There are other elements we are looking at; defining when gestures begin and end and associated lags for determining the difference between two different gestures that may start the same. The technology is developing well though; a simple system with two or three gestures is possibly only three to four years away.”
Beer agrees that voice recognition is gaining in importance. “Car buyers are benefiting from our experience in hands-free Bluetooth devices. Voice commands are given via the in-vehicle microphone. In order to ensure optimal recognition of these commands at high speeds, highly effective noise and echo cancellation is incorporated in the mobile device gateway. Commands are recognized using voice recognition software developed by IBM. Driver information is announced – according to the preferences of the respective automaker – either acoustically or via the vehicle’s display. Using voice recognition allows the driver to use their personal mobile devices while keeping their eyes on the road and hands on the steering wheel.”
Instrumentation trends
The number of instruments has increased over the years as vehicles have become more complex and the instruments themselves have become cheaper. Few cars in the 1960s had a tachometer but it is now almost a universal fitting. Similarly, legislation has now made the use of tachographs obligatory in trucks. 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. A typical car now would have two large instruments showing speed and engine revolutions plus two smaller instruments showing engine temperature and fuel gauge. All other instruments are either incorporated in the larger instruments (odometer and trip meter) or separated from the main cluster and displayed as event warnings.
On balance, while instruments appear much the same today as they did 30 years ago, they have changed extensively in that time and they are likely to change even more over the next few years.
See also: Global market review of vehicle instrumentation and cockpits – forecasts to 2014 (download)
Matthew Beecham
