Renesas Infotainment

October 24, 2012, Renesas DevCon, Anaheim, CA—We talked with Amrit Vivekanand and Brian Pluckebaum about automotive and infotainment products. The increases in internal and external communications is driving new functions in the automotive markets.

The emerging vehicle-to-vehicle communications will impact the automotive functions greatly. The area still has a great need for standards, protocols, etc., but the imperative to improve safety is very strong. The car manufacturers are working to develop ways to reduce distractions to the drivers.

One way is to have the displays in the instrument cluster provide more information of relevance to the driver. The human-machine interface areas are a moving target, as the interfaces have the conflicting requirements to provide more information and fewer distractions.

One way to improve consumer satisfaction is to move the cell phone operations to the radio. All phone operations could be controlled from the infotainment touchscreen, or through voice commands. Specific functions would be to mute the radio when a call comes in, translate text messages to voice output, and transcribe voice messages to text.

Safety, security, and the prevention of hacking attempts on the car are all important. Therefore, the car needs a cryptographic engine within the array of MPUs and CPUs to enable various security capabilities. One of the challenges is that some interfaces, like Bluetooth, have little security. Isolating the human communications from the other systems is a very important component within the infotainment system.

While improving safety and reducing distractions are important, the drivers would also like to have a system that can supply content that matches their mood, or conversely, can provide content that will reduce tension and stress. For example, a text message from the smart house could be translated to a voice message that says the children are in the house and the heater just turned on. Calming sounds like white noise or surf could play under the regular radio materials.

The infotainment center will have to handle many more functions, including GPS, geo-data mapped information such as traffic and alternate routes, turn-by-turn directions, and evening specials from local restaurants and stores. These emerging functions can at lease make the drive home less distasteful.