Experience a new level of Car Infotainment system with Connected Car

The demand for luxurious, safe, and smart vehicles is rapidly growing. Automotive manufacturers are developing automobiles with integrated infotainment systems. These systems have the ability to provide entertainment and information relevant to their passengers. It is done to enhance the in-vehicle experience for the driver and the passengers traveling.

The present-day infotainment systems and the ones to come in the future can connect with smart automotive technologies as well. Automotive systems like sensors, ADAS systems, V2X connectivity, and telematics integrate them with each other.

What is In-vehicle infotainment?

In-Vehicle Infotainment is a combination of systems to enhance the automotive experience. It delivers entertainment and information to the driver and the passengers through advanced audio/video interfaces and control elements like touch screen displays, voice commands and buttons.

HARMAN Connected Services has highly revamped the information and entertainment trends of the automotive industry. Some of the features of an in-vehicle infotainment system by HARMAN Automotive are:

High-resolution Touch Screen: Touch Screens are generally made up of LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) or TFT (Thin Film Transistors). These systems display a range from 2 inches to 12 inches in general, although some HD displays are 20 inches wide.

Analog and Digital Tuners for Radio Reception: In the infotainment systems, it is referred to the AM and FM tuner bands for low to premium infotainment systems. AM and FM radio channels can be adjusted to both manual and auto-tuning or can be scanned for available radio stations.

Multimedia Support: Connected car infotainment systems transfer personalised and interest based audio and video content to display screens, speakers and headphones. Channels like Bluetooth, HDMI cable, or USBs can be used.

Smartphone Pairing: The driver or other fellow passengers in the smart-car can pair with the vehicle infotainment system using Bluetooth connectivity. Pairing the smartphone with the system enables the user to access features of the phone through the infotainment system.

Advanced Vehicular Functions: In-vehicle infotainment systems by HARMAN supports features like parking assistance, climate controllers, voice assistants and daytime running lights indicators can control system functionalities.

Android Auto and Apple CarPlay Compatibility: Both of the platforms allow users to integrate their smartphones with the HARMAN car’s infotainment system. While Android Auto supports apps from Google through any of the Android-based smartphones. Similarly, the Apple CarPlay supports iOS-based apps from the App Store.

Connected Energy : Future of Energy Industry

There are many smart devices, shrinking price & size of sensors, advanced connectivity, e-commerce, and machine-to-machine (M2M) communication that are creating new opportunities and business models in the energy industry.

 

A strategic technology partner is needed that will help you transform, modernise, and integrate existing solutions and at the same time build new capabilities i.e., faster and cheaper. A company like Harman that has end-to-end capabilities and services is ideally placed to address this gap and deliver a smarter energy ecosystem.

What are the factors driving innovation

Now let us talk about the factors that are driving innovation. If you evolve customer expectations for greater control over the amount and timing of the energy they use and expect differentiated services. The alternate energy is seeing a rise in the form of solar and sustainable energy innovative and pervasive digital Technologies that could provide high-performance computing at lower costs New Business Models: Emergence of dynamic pricing, distributed power generation, smart meter, etc. is making utilities rethink their role in the value chain.

What are the recent trends

Smart Grids: Transition from the one-way grid to the decentralised, interconnected two-way system is underway. Distributed Generation: In this, utilities are taking a direct role in supplying distributed generation to their customers Energy Analytics - Analysis of smart grid information requires advanced analytic solutions. Dynamic Pricing: Smart grid adoption enable pricing to reflect the variable supply costs.

 

Challenges being faced currently

When talking about old infrastructure complexity it is at 605 of electric grid assets that cannot support next-gen services regulations, security and compliance are continually changing. Data integration with business systems: Integrating data from connected devices from smart meters, grids, and employees and into existing corporate business systems such as ERP, CRM, BPM

Now let us talk about connected energy as a service

What connected energy does help a single cloud-based platform to unify Internet of Things-Smart devices and systems, connectivity, data, and analytics and automation – to make grids scalable and smart.

-First, let us talk about the smart grid as a service. It is a cloud-based smart grid which is integrated to SCADA. It also operationalises advanced distribution management and outage management system. In addition to that, derives insights from AMI operations to optimise smart meter deployment and n/w ops. Moreover, to prevent any asset failure or damage, it also provides predictive maintenance and condition monitoring.

 

Now jumping towards the features

●     It creates a middle layer between the Utility & MDMS suite to address billing and AMI data

●     Also, provide pre-packaged common billing determinants and common invoice templates that can be reused

●     Helps in delivering simple, flexible, intuitive and self-learning data transformation mapping tool

●     Reconfigurable mapping options to work with custom MDMS.

●     Provide a pre-packaged & pre-configured installable client interface.

How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming the Automotive Industry

The value of Artificial Intelligence in automotive manufacturing and cloud services will exceed $10.73 billion by 2024. This prediction is made keeping in mind the value addition happening in this sector every year. In the present day scenario, if you think about the AI applications in the automotive industry, your mind will directly go towards driverless cars. However, AI can do more than that with the help of digital personal assistant. For example- it can keep us connected and safe while we are driving ourselves. 

Let’s look at the other applications of AI and how is it transforming the automotive industry.

1. AI Driving Features

Artificially intelligent cars offer two levels of functionality, i.e. Driver Assist and Fully Autonomous Mode. The difference between the two are listed below:

Driver Assist: It gives ample time for the wheels and the car control to sync in with AI before it puts in the co-pilot’s seat. AI enables advanced safety features for connected cars. Dozens of sensors help AI in identifying dangerous situations such as either it will alert the driver or take the emergency control to avoid an accident and save lives.

Driverless Automobiles: For nearly a century, the mechanical muscle to control a car has been within reach. An enormous amount of processing power is needed to drive a vehicle as driving involves more than just following a set of rules or an algorithm; it involves learning. Fully driverless cars are not yet a reality for most of us, but companies like Harman are working towards autonomous vehicles and has made this a reality.

2. AI Cloud Services

Both the functionality which are offered by autonomous cars merely lend a helping hand as they need gobs of data to do their thing. The AI cloud platform ensures that the data is available when needed.

Predictive Maintenance : Artificial Intelligence not only alerts us with check-engine lights, oil lights, and low-battery indicators but also monitors hundreds of sensor and helps in detecting problems before any of the vehicle operations is affected. AI monitors thousands of data points per second which enables it in spotting minute changes which may lead to a component failure- often long before the failure could leave you stranded.

Individualised Marketing : Advertising competition has become fierce between all the email ads, social media monetisation and pay-per-click website. Sorting the raw data to target qualified prospects has become difficult. With AI’s connection to big data, vehicle infotainment systems can be used to suggest products and services to drivers based on a wealth of raw data, for example, it can suggest a relevant restaurant according to the driver’s eating habits or the nearest gas station in case of low-fuel.

3. Driver Monitoring

AI can help in keeping an eye on the driver as well. It can detect driver’s behaviour mainly in four areas with advanced cameras and sensors.

Driver Identification: Intelligent personal assistant can quickly identify if the driver is sitting in the vehicle or not.

Driver Recognition: With advanced AI facial recognition algorithms, detecting who is driving the car has become easy. Moreover, the system will adjust seat, mirror and temperature according to the individual’s need.

Driver Monitoring: By observing the movement of the eyes, it can detect distracted driving and alert the driver, and in case of a crash, airbags will be deployed to reduce injury according to how the driver is seating.

Infotainment Control : Just because someone is driving does not mean they do not need to interact with the vehicle infotainment system. AI recognises simple hand gestures to allow the driver to control the infotainment system without taking their eyes off the road.

Artificial intelligence is changing the way people commute. These were some of the factors how technical advancements like personal digital assistant have brought a revolution in the automotive industry. It is evident that these developments will continue to maximise the driving comfort and release the risk factors involved.