Japan update: ADAS, wearables, integrated cockpits, and autonomous cars

Yoshiki Chubachi

Will the joy of driving be a design criterion for tomorrow’s vehicles? It had better be.

A couple of weeks ago, QNX Software Systems sponsored Telematics Japan in Tokyo. This event offers a great opportunity to catch up with colleagues from automotive companies, discuss technology and business trends, and showcase the latest technology demos. Speaking of which, here’s a photo of me with a Japan-localized demo of the QNX CAR Platform. You can also see a QNX-based digital instrument cluster in the lower-left corner — this was developed by Three D, one of our local technology partners:



While at the event, I spoke on the panel, “Evolving ecosystems for future HMI, OS, and telematics platform development.” During the discussion, we conducted a real-time poll and asked the audience three questions:

1) Do you think having Apple CarPlay and Android Auto will augment a vehicle brand?
2) Do you expect wearable technologies to be integrated into cars?
3) If your rental car were hacked, who would you complain to?

For question 1, 32% of the audience said CarPlay and Android Auto will improve a brand; 68% didn't think so. In my opinion, this result indicates that smartphone connectivity in cars is now an expected feature. For question 2, 76% answered that they expect to see wearables integrated into cars. This response gives us a new perspective — people are looking at wearables as a possible addition to go with ADAS systems. For example, a wearable device could help prevent accidents by monitoring the driver for drowsiness and other dangerous signs. For question 3, 68% said they would complain to the rental company. Mind you, this raises the question: if your own car were hacked, who would you complain to?

Integrated cockpits
There is growing concern around safety and security as companies attempt to grow more business by leveraging connectivity in cars. The trend is apparent if you look at the number of safety- and security-related demos at various automotive shows.

Case in point: I recently attended a private automotive event hosted by Renesas, where many ADAS and integrated cockpit demos were on display. And last month, CEATEC Japan (aka the CES of Japan) featured integrated cockpit demos from companies like Fujitsu, Pioneer, Mitsubishi, Kyocera, and NTT Docomo.

For the joy of it
Things are so different from when I first started developing in-car navigation systems 20 years ago. Infotainment systems are now turning into integrated cockpits. In Japan, the automotive industry is looking at early 2020s as the time when commercially available autonomous cars will be on the road. In the coming years, the in-car environment, including infotainment, cameras and other systems, will change immensely — I’m not exactly sure what cars in the year 2020 will look like, but I know it will be something I could never have imagined 20 years ago.

A panel participant at Telematics Japan said to me, “If autonomous cars become reality and my car is not going to let me drive anymore, I am not sure what the point of having a car is.” This is true. As we continue to develop for future cars, we may want to remind ourselves of the “joy of driving” factor.

A matter of urgency: preparing for ISO 26262 certification

Yoshiki Chubachi

Guest post by Yoshiki Chubachi, automotive business development manager for QNX Software Systems, Japan

Two weeks ago in Tokyo, QNX Software Systems sponsored an ISO 26262 seminar hosted by IT Media MONOist, a Japanese information portal for engineers. This was the fourth MONOist seminar to focus on the ISO 26262 functional safety standard, and the theme of the event conveyed an unmistakable sense of urgency: “You can’t to afford to wait any longer: how you should prepare for ISO 26262 certification”.

In his opening remarks, Mr. Pak, a representative of MONOist, noted that the number of attendees for this event increases every year. And, as the theme suggests, many engineers in the automotive community feel a strong need to get ready for ISO26262. In fact, registration filled up just three days after the event was announced.

The event opened with a keynote speech by Mr. Koyata of the Japan Automobile Research Institute (JARI), who spoke on functional safety as a core competency for engineers. A former engineer at Panasonic, Mr. Koyata now works as an ISO 26262 consultant at JARI. In his speech, he argued that every automotive developer should embrace knowledge of ISO 26262 and that automakers and Tier 1 suppliers should adopt a functional "safety culture." Interestingly, his argument aligns with what Chris Hobbs and Yi Zheng of QNX advocate in their paper, “10 truths about building safe embedded software systems.” My Koyata also discussed the difference between safety and ‘Hinshitu (Quality)” which is a strong point of Japan industry.

Next up were presentations by the co-sponsor DNV Business Assurance Japan. The talks focused on safety concepts and architecture as well as on metrics for hardware safety design for ISO 26262.

I had the opportunity to present on software architecture and functional safety, describing how the QNX microkernel architecture can provide an ideal system foundation for automotive systems with functional safety requirements. I spoke to a number of attendees after the seminar, and they all recognized the need to build an ISO 26262 process, but didn’t know how to start. The need, and opportunity, for education is great.

Yoshiki presenting at the MONOist ISO 26262 seminar. Source: MONOist

The event ended with a speech by Mr. Shiraishi of Keio University. He has worked on space satellite systems and offered some interesting comparisons between the functional safety of space satellites and automotive systems.

Safety and reliability go hand in hand. “Made in Japan” is a brand widely known for its reliability. Although Japan is somewhat behind when it comes to awareness for ISO 26262 certification, I see a great potential for it to be the leader in automotive safety. Japanese engineers take pride in the reliability of products they build, and this mindset can be extended to the new generation of functional safety systems in automotive.

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Additional reading

QNX Unveils New OS for Automotive Safety
Architectures for ISO 26262 systems with multiple ASIL requirements (whitepaper)
Protecting Software Components from Interference in an ISO 26262 System (whitepaper)
Ten Truths about Building Safe Embedded Software Systems (whitepaper)

Why doesn’t my navigation system understand me?

A story where big is good, but small is even better.

Yoshiki Chubachi

My wife and I are about to go shopping in a nearby town. So I get into my car, turn the key, and set the destination from POIs on the navigation system. The route calculation starts and gives me today’s route. But somehow, I feel a sense of doubt every time this route comes up on the system...

Route calculation in navigation uses Dijkstra's algorithm, invented by Edsger Dijkstra in 1956 to determine the shortest path in a graph. To save calculation time, navigation systems use two directional searches: one as the starting point and the other as the destination point. The data scheme that navigation systems use to represent maps consists of nodes, links, and attributes. Typically, a node represents a street intersection; a link represents the stretch of road, or connection, between two nodes; and attributes consist of properties such as street name, street addresses, and speed limit (see diagram).

Features of a map database. From Wikipedia.

As you may guess, it can take a long time to calculate the shortest path from all of the routes available. The problem is, automakers typically impose stringent requirements on timing. For example, I know of an automaker that expected the route from Hokkaido (in northern Japan) to Kyushu (in southern Japan) to be calculated in just a few seconds.

To address this issue, a system can use a variety of approaches. For instance, it can store map data hierarchically, where the highest class consists of major highways. To choose a route between two points, the system follows the hierarchical order, from high to low. Another approach is to use precalculated data, prepared by the navigation supplier. These examples offer only a glimpse of the complexity and magnitude of the problems faced by navigation system vendors.

An encouraging trend
Big data is the hot topic in the navigation world. One source of this data is mobile phones, which provide floating car data (current speed, current location, travel direction, etc.) that can be used by digital instrument clusters and other telematics components. A system that could benefit from such data is VICS (Vehicle Information and Communication System), a traffic-information standard used in Japan and supported by Japanese navigation systems. Currently, VICS broadcasts information updates only every 5 minutes because of the bandwidth limitations of the FM sub-band that it uses. As a result, a navigation system will sometimes indicate that no traffic jam exists, even though digital traffic signs indicate that a jam does indeed exist and that service is limited to the main road. This delay, and the inconvenience it causes, could be addressed with floating car data.


An example of a VICS-enabled system in which traffic congestion, alternate routes, and other information is overlaid on the navigation map. Source: VICS

During the great earthquake disaster in East Japan, Google and automotive OEMs (Honda, Nissan, Toyota) collaborated by using floating car data to provide road availability — a clear demonstration of how can big data can enhance car navigation. Leveraging big data to improve route calculation is an encouraging trend.

Small data: making it personal
Still, a lot can be accomplished with small data; specifically, personalization. I may prefer one route on the weekend, but another route on a rainy day, and yet another route on my wife's birthday. To some extent, a self-learning system could realize this personalization by gauging how frequently I've used a route in the past. But I don’t think that's enough. As of now, I feel that my navigation system doesn't understand me as well as Amazon, which at least seems to know which book I’d like to read! Navigation systems need to learn more about who I am, how well I can drive, and what I like.

Personalization resides on the far side of big data but offers more convenience to the driver. The more a navigation system can learn more about a driver (as in “Oh, this guy has limited driving skills and doesn’t like narrow roads”), the better. It is best to store this data on a server; that way, the driver could benefit even if he or she switches to a different car or navigation system. This can be done using the latest web technologies and machine learning. Currently, navigation systems employ a rule-based algorithm, but it would be interesting to investigate probability-based approaches, such as Bayesian networks.

I’m looking forward to the day when my navigation system can provide a route that suits my personal tastes, skills, and habits. Navigation suppliers may be experiencing threats from the mobile world, including Google and Apple, but I think that returning to the original point of navigation — customer satisfaction — can be achieved by experienced navigation developers.

Yoshiki Chubachi is the automotive business development manager for QNX Software Systems in Japan

Making the smartphone connection: The state of automotive navigation in Japan

A guest post from Yoshiki Chubachi, the automotive business development manager for QNX Software Systems in Japan

Yoshiki Chubachi

The market for navigation systems in Japan grew rapidly until 2006, but since 2007 the yearly volume has reached the saturation point, at about 2.9M units. For instance, in 2008, consumers purchased 900k after-market systems, 1.1M dealer-installed systems, and 909k factory-installed systems. In 2010, those numbers had changed slightly: 1.01M after-market systems, 1.03M dealer-installed systems, and 858k factory-installed systems (source: Yano Research Institute).

That said, the market is starting to experience a shift from after-market to factory-installed devices. Automakers and their tier one suppliers are struggling to differentiate their products by implementing value-added features.

To get a feel for current navigation trends in Japan, let’s look at some notable after-market products that shipped in 2011. As you'll see, smartphones are exerting a major influence on this market, both in terms of system design and user features:

Pioneer AVIC-VH09CS — This high-end system combines augmented reality technology with a front-view camera, overlaying your route on a live video of the road. It also implements a collision warning system by measuring the distance of the car ahead. Other features include terrestrial digital TV (full HD and 1seg), DVD video, AM-FM, CD and SD music, iPod connectivity, and music ripping and encoding.

Clarion NX501 — The smartphone world seems to drive navigation trends, and the Clarion NX501 is no exception. It offers a touchscreen UI that supports swipes, flicks, and other finger gestures similar to those found in smartphones and tablets. Suzuki factory-installed systems also use the type of user interface.

Fujitsu-Ten AVN-F01i — This system comes with three bundled iPhone applications: Twitter Drive (combines tweets with location data), Where is My Car (uses augmented reality to show your parking location on the phone screen; great for finding your car in large parking lots); and News Reader (allows the system’s text-to-speech engine to read out news articles). The system connects to the phone through Bluetooth.

Panasonic CN-H500WD — The system also lets you use finger swipes to operate navigation and audio functions, including a scrolling map. It comes with a smartphone application that provides POI search, which is downloaded to the navigation system through Bluetooth.

Mitsubishi NR-MZ50 — This system provides an “OpenInfo” service based on Pioneer’s Smartloop system, which provides traffic data from a Pioneer server. VICS (Vehicle Information and Communication System) is a popular traffic data service in Japan that is similar to the RDS-TMC standard, but its coverage is limited to main highways. The smartphone receives traffic data, derived from anonymous traffic probe information, wherever the VICS service isn't supported. Information from the phone is transmitted to the navigation system through Bluetooth.

Connectivity between navigation systems and smartphones remains an issue in Japan. Conventional cell phones are equipped with the Bluetooth DUN profile, which enables data communication between the nav system and the phone, but unfortunately, some carriers still don’t support this profile. Until they do, lack of connectivity will remain a roadblock.

Nonetheless, using smartphones to deliver applications and the user experience has become a major trend in Japan’s navigation systems. Some automotive tier one suppliers, such as Pioneer, already provide navigation applications on the phone. The QNX CAR 2 application platform, with its mobile connectivity features and auto-centric HTML5 framework, offers an ideal foundation for enabling this approach.