The Car of the Future Gets a Boost Today
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| The automotive world moved one step closer to the development of the fully networked car after the conclusion last month of The Fully Networked Car: Information and Communication Technologies in Motor Vehicles, held at the Geneva International Motor Show. The workshop and accompanying exhibition was organized by ISO, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to help drive the development of what has been termed as a fully networked car.
What does it mean to develop a fully networked car? According to Jack Sheldon, IEC standardization strategy manager, the fully networked car concept represents an evolution in car design and manufacturing that brings together various disparate information and communication technologies to create a safer and more functional vehicle that can also enhance consumers' comfort and enjoyment.
The key to achieving this is interoperability. "What we're trying to do with the fully networked car is to get these different technology elements to work together, because they've not been designed to work together at all," says Sheldon.
Indeed, much of the focus of the workshop was exactly on that issue. Information covered during the sessions included an examination of the interoperability of electronic devices and the integration of entertainment, navigation and communication capabilities; standardization issues that need to be resolved in order to better enable interoperability; the impact of telecommunications standards on vehicles and national, regional and global standards initiatives for communications in vehicles; interoperability between in-car systems and different communication platforms; and vehicle communications benefits and challenges. And since the issues raised during the workshop impact a number of different groups, The Fully Networked Car attracted a wide variety of participants, including decision makers, engineers, designers, planners, government officials, regulators and standards experts.
While ISO, IEC and ITU have worked together on other initiatives in the past, the workshop represents the first major collaboration on the subject of networked cars by the three standardization organizations. The decision to do so was driven by the very issues facing the industry—namely, the lack of full operability between technologies. "If we're going to network the whole car, we have to find ways of getting these technologies to work together. In that sense, it became necessary for ISO, IEC and ITU to get together and start talking," Sheldon says.
For IEC, which focuses on developing electrical and electronic standards for areas such as audio and video technologies, sponsorship of the show was a natural fit. Along with the fact that many of its publications will have a direct impact on the fully networked car, the organization has over the last decade reorganized its standards development committees to take a more holistic view of technology themselves so as to better incorporate different technology elements into individual standards.
One result of this vertical committee integration was the development of IEC's multimedia home server systems standards. While this doesn't necessarily directly apply to cars—at least not yet—Sheldon believes a similar version of the technology could eventually be seen in vehicles. "One way or another, you won't get away with not having one in your car," he says.
But it looks like we won't be seeing a fully networked car for a while. In fact, Sheldon suggests that there may never be a time when we can confidently state that cars are now officially fully networked. Instead, he says, "I think we're going to see incremental changes as new technologies come along."
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