How the automotive cabin is transforming into an integrated cockpit: conversations on smart driving
The increased integration and personalization of the automotive cockpit is enhancing the driving experience by making interior cabin more comfortable and convenient for drivers and passengers. In this video, our digital cockpit and body electronics experts discuss the evolutions happening in display, audio, driver monitoring, gesturing and more that are making way for a better in-vehicle experience.
Resources
-
arrow-right Find featured content and reference designs to build an interactive digital cockpit. -
arrow-right Find the reference designs and complementary ICs you need to build interactive, not distractive infotainment systems in our system block diagrams. -
arrow-right Build personalized, comfortable and convenient body electronics and lighting systems with our products and designs.
Hello, and welcome to the discussion on the evolution of the cockpit. Gentlemen, we hear the term integrated cockpit, or some people call it digital cockpit. What's that definition mean to you?
At the very heart of it, it's really about taking the different screens inside the car, whether that be your cluster where your speed is, whether that be the center stack, which is where your big screen tends to be today. Moving forward, it can actually also be a heads up display, and really integrating them to one system.
You could also then change where the screens are, the number of screens. But really, it's about how you get the driver the information they need, when they need it, where they need it. That's what's so exciting about HUD. When you start thinking about heads up, and you don't have to look down, and you've got information about where you should be going from a navigation point of view, particularly information about the road conditions, what music you want to switch to, lots of implications-- or lots of opportunities there to keep the driver more focused on the road.
Yeah, eyes on the road, right? And if you're looking through the windshield, and there's information, that's perfect. Right? So how does the aspect of convenience, and interaction, and comfort of the cabin fit into this?
Yeah, so before I answer that, I just want to expand on what Curt mentioned. Now, Curt talked about display of information that's primarily inside the car. But nowadays, or at least the trend now, is Williams are looking at adding information, say, in the rear side of the car, so as a driver, you can actually look at the car in front of you, and maybe the car in front of you is braking. And so the driver also has that ability. And so Williams are looking at adding the capability to add information in real-life systems so the drivers behind has that information.
Now with regard to comfort and convenience, of course, it's all about the driver and the occupant experience inside the car. So it's really about, are they comfortable inside the car? Is the temperature right? Is the humidity right? Is the lighting inside the car right? Because that ultimately influences how the driver and the passengers feel and, potentially, even how they're driving the car. So it's really important to control that environment as well for the overall experience.
Yeah. And kind of in that theme, a lot of the vehicles now are, you know, the interior is where the consumer is focused on, right? And it's that level of personalization. So where do you see the personalization of the vehicle taking a place in the cabin?
Yes. You know, so it's really about how the driver and the passengers inside the car feel once they're inside the car. I mean, they spend a lot of time inside the car. And, obviously, the comfort and convenience aspects plays a role in terms of the overall experience. So the personalization could be, is the temperature right? Is the humidity level inside the car right? Is the air quality inside the car right?
And again, these are some of the HVAC that control these. The position of the seat also an important aspect. Because, again, the driver feels, how their driving, is influenced by the overall comfort in the car.
So it's really important. The personalization even starts from outside the car. So they can, actually, looking at setting up all the interior of the car with the phone, even before they get into the car. So these are some of the advances that are happening overall in this area.
And couple that with ride-sharing, and maybe you were going to a car that's in a parking lot that's a ride sharing thing. It sees your preference based on your phone. It starts connecting your digital world to that loaner vehicle that you're going to have for a few hours. Makes for a better driving experience.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think one of the changes that were being introduced into the cabin is coming from ADAS and the whole autonomous awareness, if you will, coming into the vehicle, things like surround view systems, driver monitoring systems, camera mirror systems. Right? Any thoughts on the design and how those are being implemented in a vehicle today?
Yeah, I think one standard example is the mirror. So the mirror today is a glass. It reflects from outside. But now, those things are being changed to displays of camera images. So cameras are being installed outside the side mirror or rear view mirror. And now, the information is displayed as is a video.
And so one of the things, for example, if you look at the rear view mirror, there's an obstruction for the glass based mirror. There's an obstruction of the passengers. The passengers in the rear seat, perhaps, are obstructing the view, full view. Now you place a camera outside, and feed an image from the camera to the display, now it's an unobstructed view. And so those kinds of trends are happening in these mirror systems, CMS, as you mentioned.
And I think there's some even other advantages. Right? You start thing about side mirrors. Right? They're not the most attractive thing in the world. And replacing those with a camera improves the look of the system. It reduces the windbreak. So it's quieter inside the cabin. A more pleasant environment. That may be able to allow you to eliminate some insulation, which reduces weight, which goes to the standards of CAFE standards.
It also, though, introduces some interesting concepts around safety. Because, all of sudden, you are now taking some mission critical applications, like your mirrors, and putting them in a system that also has the consumer OS running on it. And how do you separate those? How do you keep it firewalled, so that if your consumer OS does go down, you still have all the safety functionality? That's going to be a really interesting design challenge that people who are dealing with.
The other part about that that's interesting is different cars always have different architectures, and where they want to put the functionality. And software is becoming such a big issue inside cars, you would like to have some way that you can port that software to around, no matter how the car we wants to architect systems.
Right. Yeah, absolutely. One of the big things I can envision is, if you're watching the driver, watching their eyes, where they're looking, you could provide relevant information as they're scanning each one of the two mirrors, the rear view mirror and ahead, right? And an example could be turn by turn navigation, where you're actually following the eyes. And as you're making the turn, the arrow that shows where your turn is actually following that. Really, really cool next generation type of stuff. Right?
Yeah. So coming from the state of Texas, where the sun's always shining, it's really, really hot. We get the 100 degree days. One of the most exciting areas is window tinting. Right? And we kind of, historically, that's been a big issue for law enforcement, especially at night, because they can't see in there. It's a safety thing.
But there's been some major advances in automotive window tinting and the ability to change the tint in a window. Can you comment on the challenges there?
Yeah. I mean, again, you bring up a good point there. So window tinting, which is electronic tinting, the glass technology's available today. And also, the electronics to drive that window tinting is available. So because, you know, a car has a DC battery and these window tinting systems require AC voltages, there are electronic systems that can generate the AC voltage necessary for driving this window tint.
Now, the advantage, obviously, is from a user experience-- obviously, one of the big things you're trying to do inside the cabin is control the temperature, the comfort level. And so one of the things that influences the temperature inside the cabin is sunlight. Right? So you can actually modulate the amount of sunlight that's coming in and, thereby, maybe even operate the HVAC system efficiently.
And, you know, again, this becomes very important, especially in the context of electric vehicles, where after the traction inverter, the second biggest consumer of energy, of the battery energy, is the heating and cooling systems. So if you're able to reduce the amount of heat that's coming in because of sunlight with window tinting, you can potentially extend the range that the car is able to go.
And so there's a lot of benefits. And, of course, to your point, you know, again, in the evening, perhaps, you want to lighten up the tint. And so that's, again, possible with these technologies.
Yeah. And maybe eventually, the whole elimination of the visor. Right? As you're driving directly in the sun. Gentlemen, great discussion on the evolution of the cockpit. Really great things coming.
For more design resources or information on integrated cockpit, please click on the link below, or go to ti.com/cockpit.
[MUSIC PLAYING]