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Picture this. As you set out to work on a cold Monday morning, one touch of your smartphone unlocks the car door, adjusts the driver’s seat, starts the car and turns on the heat to your pre-determined setting. A few minutes into the drive your car’s infotainment system notifies you to slow down at the school zone crosswalk, which is in use just 300 feet ahead. Moments later you are notified of a traffic jam ahead and that your back right tire is leaking. Seconds later you learn your heart rate has increased. Too much stress for a Monday morning.
Does any of this sound far-fetched? Perhaps, but applications like these might not really be as far off as you think.
The automotive infotainment system today looks a lot like a tablet on wheels as it continues to converge with the mobile ecosystem. In fact, automotive is on the road to leveraging the same emerging technologies found in mobile devices, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Smart, Miracast, WLAN, NFC and GNSS.
Key to enabling this transition is a technology known as Bluetooth Smart Ready or Bluetooth Low Energy. Bluetooth Smart Ready technology, which allows products to sip power at an incremental rate, will play a vital role in enabling connectivity between the car and wearable tech and body sensors, such as the ability to monitor biometric indicators including driver fatigue, blood alcohol content and glucose levels. With Apple and Google now supporting Bluetooth Smart Ready technology an ecosystem has already begun to form. In fact just this month Nissan introduced its Nismo smartwatch, which monitors average vehicle speeds and fuel consumption as well as the driver’s heart rate, temperature and other biometrics.
Analysts predict the use of in-car Wi-Fi-enabled applications to grow eight-fold by 2019, as car makers leverage the latest technologies to differentiate in an increasingly competitive market. One of the most immediate applications enabled by Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Smart Ready technology is the smart remote, allowing drivers to use their smartphone to remotely adjust seat, temperature and infotainment settings while providing vital data on automotive performance and diagnostics.
Not only will Bluetooth Smart Ready technology seamlessly sync mobile devices to the vehicle audio and display system, the technology offers great promise for new innovations in vehicle to person, vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure communications. Combining the ad-hoc capability of Bluetooth Smart with angle-of-arrival technology has the potential to open up a whole new class of low-energy V2X applications. Designed to improve both driver and traffic safety, V2X communications will allow drivers to anticipate upcoming road hazards, traffic incidents and monitor speed limits. Add to this the potential Bluetooth Long Range extensions, the same technology that allows you to geo-fence your child or pet at the park. This will allow you to communicate with stop lights, speed limit signs and other road-side infrastructure. For example, when the V2X system reports a blocked road or traffic jam on the route, future vehicles will have the ability to automatically adjust speed or calculate an alternative route.
The groundwork for converging the automotive industry with the fast-moving mobile ecosystem is already being laid. With infotainment systems serving as a tablet on wheels, consumer access to these exciting new applications will be as simple as an app download. The technology and roadmap associated with the fast-moving mobile ecosystem mean that the possibilities are endless.
