The way drivers control and interact with their cars contributes to driver awareness as well as driving pleasure. The proliferation of electronic devices and system features in modern automobiles provides useful information, such as navigation data, and convenience, as with mobile-phone communications and entertainment. But the devices also run the risk of distracting a driver from safely operating the vehicle or of overloading the driver with more information than needed.
From the microchip level to the tier-one suppliers of systems to the automotive OEMs, the issues of data presentation and intuitive operator controls-or the human-machine interface (HMI)-are tempered by issues of cost and consumer acceptance. The latter is vital to a technology's becoming widespread.
However, gauging acceptance is difficult for several reasons, said Anand Ramamoorthy, director of car navigation and telematics for the Automotive Business Unit of semiconductor supplier Renesas Technology America (San Jose, Calif.).
"The automotive HMI doesn't lend itself well to the design cycle, so it is hard to get it right," Ramamoorthy said. "With handset product design, three to five models can be introduced within a year. In auto products it's a three- to five-year design cycle, so it's difficult to get customer feedback." Because of that lag, Ramamoorthy said, OEMs often hedge their bets by transitioning with hybrid solutions, such as controlling climate, navigation or audio systems by tactile controls as well as voice recognition. And of course, any technology has to be packaged to work in environmental extremes that can range from -40 degrees C to 85 degrees C and that are rife with noise and vibration.
Using voice recognition to control systems while a driver's hands remain on the wheel is becoming more precise, with wider functionality, thanks to improvements in voice engines. At the same time there's the potential to reduce costs, allowing the technology "to transition from the premium into the mass-market model ranges, boosting product volume and advancing technology," Ramamoorthy said. Specifically, he said, echo cancellation and noise suppression are key attributes for automotive voice recognition.
"Usually these functions have been done with DSP processing. But now it is possible to use a RISC processor efficiently-a double-precision floating-point unit with vector functions-to replace DSP processing with one computing engine without an intercomputing architecture between chips," he said. "This saves cost and complexity."
For instance, noise suppression can use 30 Mips with DSP-based processing, he said, while the RSIC processor he cited can cut that figure in half.
Similarly emphasizing development that allows more widespread, but lower-cost, voice recognition technology is Kevin Tanaka, automotive product marketing manager at Xilinx Inc. The San Jose company is working with Microsoft and other suppliers to develop voice technology, such as speech processing and echo noise cancellation, using "FPGA-based parallel processing with DSP-type functionality," Tanaka said. "You can handle it with one FPGA, if configured the right way, as opposed to serial DSPs. Voice and speech synthesis integrated into a single FPGA, rather than several components on a board, lowers cost."
Tanaka said the cost of FPGAs themselves is coming down, thanks to the advent of copper-based 90-nanometer processing on 300-mm wafers. Xilinx claims this provides an 80 percent chip-size reduction over 130-nm technology, along with economies of scale derived from sharing wafer space with chips for consumer and other applications. "They can compete with ASICs and DSPs in automotive if you account for the integration costs," he said.
Like Ramamoorthy at Renesas, Tanaka mentioned the longer automotive design cycle. FPGA technology is a boon for this time line, he said, because it offers the ability to program what goes onto the device. "With OEMs often not knowing what they may need until late in the design process, we can change that [with software], whereas microcontrollers, DSPs and ASICs are hardware-based and done in silicon." In addition, reprogrammability makes it possible to develop standard systems-a heads-up display (HUD) or navigation system, for example-that can be reconfigured to give the "look and feel" appropriate to a specific car line.
Tanaka said that by 2010 or so, there may be a welter of government safety mandates affecting these and prospective systems, such as lane-departure control and advanced adaptive cruise control. The design flexibility of FPGAs will benefit tier ones and OEMs in developing car-line-specific systems that meet any future dictates, he said.
View from tier one
At the component supplier level, where chips are integrated into the systems made available to the automakers, technologies to reduce driver distraction are seen from a somewhat different perspective. "Voice recognition is a challenge to develop, with issues of differences in language, pronunciation and dialect," said Doug Patton, senior vice president of the Engineering Group at Denso International America (Southfield, Mich.). "It's a software issue, and systems that can 'learn' for individual applications will be key [to acceptance]. Software development can be extensive, so system cost is more than just piece parts of mics [microphones] and processors."
Patton said Denso International has its own foundry for unique chips. But he added that volumes are nowhere near those of traditional chip suppliers-roughly on the order of 1 million vs. 10 million-driving up costs. With large volumes, "the chip industry can just bin sort for quality," Patton said. "We can't do that, and need robust, more costly designs for quality in the long run." Thus, Patton said that Denso enforces strict process control and attention to design detail under a "PDCA" (plan, do, check, action-to-correct) system.
He also voiced the need for standards under which systems suppliers can develop technology tailored to individual carmaker customers. "No one company has it all," Patton said. "Some aspects of safety have to be driven by industry as a whole, to formulate standards for OEMs to work within to come up with systems with their own 'advantage' "-that is, their own characteristic form and feel. Once this occurs, Patton said, volumes will go up and costs down. He cited HUDs and navigation systems as examples, but without standards for hardware and information the volume is not growing rapidly enough for a significant cost drop.
Also noting the importance of software was Dick Lind, director of advanced engineering, electronics and safety at Delphi (Kokomo, Ind.). "Voice actuation engines get better all the time, and development of algorithms and meeting cost targets are challenges," Lind said. "Software and HMI are critical to taking safety information from sensors and presenting it to a driver in a useful format."
Data presentation is part of what Lind said Delphi is doing to enhance the "cocoon" of safety around a vehicle with what it calls an Integrated Safety Systems approach. In this effort, the company has developed an eye-tracking system. Algorithms determine if the driver is becoming drowsy by computing the average time the eye is closed over a given time interval and issuing a warning if needed. The system could eventually signal a call center to provide a "wake up" call.
The system uses a CMOS camera to track the pupil of the driver's eye. Infrared LEDs, invisible to the driver, furnish illumination for the camera. CMOS imaging is used not just for a cost advantage over CCD cameras but for its higher dynamic range (120 dB). Thus, lighting conditions in tunnels and from headlights would not cause blinding and bleeding across pixels. Delphi plans to introduce the eye-tracking system in the truck aftermarket this year.
In the future, Lind said, eye tracking can be integrated with other sensors. For example, radar, IR and visible-light cameras could monitor lane markers, road edges and other vehicles on the road. If a driver is not looking in the direction of a rapidly developing hazard (such as lane departure or another vehicle), the eye-tracking technology would issue an appropriate warning. No warning or a lower-level alert would be used if a driver was looking directly at or near the area the sensors indicate should be of concern.
It is apparent that safety technology is proceeding at a major pace. But until industry and government standards are formalized to account for the full potential of modern electronics in combating driver information overload and distraction, the widespread benefits will likely remain down the road, pending more rapid cost declines.
Rick DeMeis (rdemeis@cmp.com) is site editor for CMP Media LLC's Automotive DesignLine.
