The car is becoming a personal assistant

By 2022, the global market for connected mobility is set to grow by almost 25 percent per year. In just a few years, cars will become an active part of the IoT and will be able to communicate with other modes of transportation as well as with the smart home. At CES 2017, Bosch is presenting a new concept car that shows how different spheres of life will be seamlessly interconnected in the future. “The vehicle will play a central role in cross-domain communication,” Struth said. Personalized communication between the car and its driver will also be expanded: New functions are connecting the car to its surroundings, the smart home and the repair shop. These functions will make highly automated driving possible. “Bosch is working diligently to make sure that mobility and smart services become one,” said Struth. “If the car is connected to the smart home or the smart city via the cloud, there will be measurable benefits. Connectivity is turning the car into an assistant on four wheels.”

What is more, the Bosch concept car comprises a broad range of innovative technologies: The moment the driver sits down, facial recognition technology sets the steering wheel, mirrors, interior temperature, and radio station according to the driver’s individual preferences. The system is controlled via a haptic touch display and an innovative gesture control system, both of which give tangible feedback when they are used. If the car is highly automated, cloud-based services enable videoconferences, or allow drivers and passengers to plan their weekend shopping trips or watch the latest videos. By 2025, highly automated driving will save the average frequent driver in the United States, Germany or China almost 100 hours per year, according to a study that Bosch recently commissioned. In purely technical terms, communication control units such as the Bosch Central Gateway make connectivity possible. The Gateway is a hub that ensures communication with all domains across all data buses. ETAS and ESCRYPT, which are both part of the Bosch Group, provide the transmission and encryption solutions. These ensure that cloud-based vehicle software updates can be carried out securely throughout the vehicle’s service life. If the car communicates with its surroundings, security updates must be carried out on a regular basis.

When communicating with its surroundings, the car also takes on important tasks in the connected city. For instance, with community-based parking, the car is becoming a parking spot locator. When driving along the street, the car detects gaps between parked cars. The data gathered is then transmitted to a digital street map. High-performance Bosch algorithms assess the plausibility of the data and make forecasts on the parking spot situation. A cloud-based service that uses this data to create a real-time parking map saves the driver a great deal of time and money, and also helps reduce stress. Pilot projects in the U.S. are planned for 2017. In cooperation with Mercedes-Benz, Bosch is currently testing the community-based parking concept in metropolitan Stuttgart.

SOURCE: Bosch