Transportation | Automotive Electronics

by Rainer Makowitz

After the malware attacks on mobile devices running the Android operating system, speculations about automotive viruses have soared again. Compared to IT and telecom, the plague of car viruses has not (yet) arrived in the automotive industry. Open networks appeared in IT in 1985, and appeared in telecom 15 years later. It wasn’t until 2005 that open networks made it to automotive. IT-based attacks started to make headlines as early as 1990, and telecom followed 15 years later. Last year was the “year” of media coverage about attacks on cars. Apply this simple time pattern to malware: The virus phenomenon was widely seen in IT starting in 1995, and today we see it the telecom and mobile platform industries. Automotive is still unperturbed. For now.

But it is high time to look at the car as a connected IT system. The software is just beginning to be standardized and countermeasures are starting to be put in place to prevent major threats in the near future.

Here are the main reasons why your car is still very hard to hack if you apply a few common sense rules:

#1 Physical access is required to reach “open interfaces” like the OBD II connector or USB plugs.
Keep your car locked when you leave it.

#2  Most malware routes into the car are indirect in nature via attacks on service equipment and infested consumer devices.
Make sure you have malware defense established on your smartphone.

#3 Wireless access points are still rare and should be well defended.
Security breaches reported recently were due to significant violations of good software design practices in the custom code, e.g. telematics units, so hold off on subscribing to telematics services for now.

At the automotive security panel discussion at the Freescale Technology Forum this year, there was wide agreement that the car industry has to go back to the basics of security which means know your friends, know who you are communicating with, and follow common sense security practices.

Interested? Read the complete entryhttp://blogs.freescale.com/2011/07/21/automotive-radar-at-new-resolution-levels/

Auto -inflating tires are given in science fiction futures, if the vehicles have wheels that is. Look at the film Demolition Man, which features Wesley Snipe's character using voice commands to auto-inflate a tire. It seems like a simple idea, only now is it made?

From Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company comes the Air Maintenance Technology (AMT). The entire system is housed inside the tire. There will be no need for external intervention. Goodyear senior vice president and chief technical officer Jean-Claude Kihn elaborated, "While the technology is complex, the idea behind the AMT system is relatively simple and powered by the tire itself as it rolls down the road."

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)Office of Vehicle Technology awarded Goodyear with $1.5 million USD for further research in using the AMT system on commercial truck tires. Tires not properly inflated will cause up to a 3.3% drop in fuel economy. The DOE's angle is to lessen the demand for foreign oil by the 3.3%. The average semi-truck drives up to 1 million miles in its life time. The 3.3% improvement could mean a savings of $6,000 USD in the end. (3.3% ~= 0.12 cents per . With a liberal 20 mpg, the savings comes up to $6.000 at current gasoline prices.)

The grant also applies to a Goodyear and PPG Industries partnership on improving rolling resistance and fuel efficiencies of tires.

There is no date or pricing on the AMT system's release. Goodyear is also very hush on how the technology works. I am going to guess it is very similar to the SIT (self inflating tire) from 2008.

Cabe

(Image via Technische Universitaet Muenchen)

I did not know how to turn off the change oil light in my car, it was not in the manual. What did I do? I checked youtube for the answer. Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TU) and Audi are about to bring a video manual you can talk to on all new model Audi cars.

The Avatar-based Virtual Co-driver System (AviCoS) is a animated avatar that can give the driver, or anyone in the car, detailed information on the vehicle using "natural-language dialog." Simply ask a question, and the system will deliver the answer. AviCoS uses an AI that can analyze complete sentences and answer using audio, images, or video on a embedded screen in the car. The avatar can also visually guide the user through the car, or point to areas of interest.

If the user is unfamiliar with a certain feature of the car, the touch screen lets the user enter the "Touch & Tell Mode." The user touches the area of the car where more information is needed, the avatar provides all the background information. While driving, all animations and graphical outputs are suppressed to avoid distracting the driver. However, voice communication will still work. " Overall, AviCoS provides comfortable and interactive access to multimedia content that goes far beyond the information contained in printed manuals. The self-explanatory system can be used without training, making it easy to get familiar with the operation of a vehicle," said TU Institute for Business Informatics' Dr Michael Schermann.

The development team stated that the next step is to sense the drivers mood through elevated speech patterns or tone of voice. When angry, the animations are suppressed.  In a time a difficulty, I would not care to see flashy animations, I suppose.

Eavesdropper

Dashboard displays, or instrument panels have not always existed, were taken a little bit longer in being part of vehicle. If you needed to know how much gas was left in an early car, you put a stick in your gas tank, and if you wanted to know the temperature, you went to the radiator itself. By the 1930s, cars started coming with gauges, and by the mid-30's, all cars included what has been graciousl termed the "idiot light," or a warning light indicating that something is wrong with the vehicle. Even in the present day, manufacturers are tinkering with the instrument panel, moving it to the center of the dashboard or packing it full of technology that may make keeping your eyes on the road harder than ever.

At minimum, a dashboard display has a speedometer and a fuel gauge. In addition to those gauges, the display will feature some combination of a tachometer, charging system gauge, oil pressure gauge and engine temperature gauge, but there are some with GPS, Music/Video player, Parking cameras even with smartphone sync system (just amazing). In fact, it may surprise you to learn how much time carmakers spend designing dashboard displays, how much they invest ($$$$$$) and how that this might change in the future, here is where I see a challenge.

Digital dashes came in 2000s but most digital speedometers have had green numbers displayed on a dark green or black background. The current model Honda Civic has an upper digital dashboard with white numbers against a blue screen, digital fuel and temperature gauges. Toyota is using electronic instruments for showing the cars parameters for its Yaris/Vitz model , the car employs a vacuum fluorescent display to indicate the speed, RPM, fuel level, odometer, etc. On high tech vehicles, such as the Mercedes-Benz S-Class and Lexus LFA, the instrument gauges are shown on LCD displays instead of having a mechanical gauge. The displays could be configured for a wide array of features. As you see all carmakers seems to be trying to get outstanding features and useful applications for its vehicles' dashboards, it is on your hands (actually in your brain) to create solutions... join the race

For the future, there are endless possibilities to develop, there are great tools for start our applications I just found this DEMO from Freescale... and seems to have all what I need for a beginner in dashboards  applications, works with a 16-bit MCU take a look and let me know if you know any tool that could help, or what are you creating

HEV Solutions Guide is intended to help you explore TI's IC solutions as the various sectors become increasingly electrified on a path toward energy efficiency and sustainability.

Guide includes: System block diagrams, followed by details about key devices and support functions