A car that could dial a phone, play DVDs

When you watch a James Bond movie, you can't help gawking at the smart Aston Martin that executes breathtaking manouevres at Bond’s command. What if you could own such a car that could dial a phone, play DVDs for your family and be an extension of your digital home—all at one voice command? And now all this is for real.

The people who dreamt up such cars in the 1960s auto shows were a little off on the date. But finally some initial versions of these electronically-governed cars are on the highway. You can already buy cars with adaptive cruise control that automatically slow down if the radar or laser detects you tailgating. Your car can warn you when you stray across lane markings, and these kinds of sensors are already being used experimentally in cars that drive themselves.

Playing an important role is a clutch of Indian companies collaborating with global majors. Multinationals like Intel or Wind River and Freescale Semiconductor are working with players like Delphi in the Tier-I category. But it is the smaller players making the components that have made India a powerhouse in auto component design, which are working towards a single platform on which all electronic devices can work on.

Varroc Group, a supplier of automotive parts for automobiles in the domestic and overseas markets with manufacturing facilities across India and two plants in Europe, has seen the benefits. It works with Freescale on a low-cost digital dashboard for the Bajaj Pulsar, and is now looking at smart consoles for next-generation cars. “There are other projects happening with them as well,” says Ashok Chandak, Sr VP of the Aurangabad-based company, adding that Freescale’s expertise has helped make them attain the next level of sophistication.

“The era of intelligent driving systems is at our doorstep,” says Sanat Rao, marketing director, emerging markets, at Intel India. At the firm’s sprawling office in Bangalore, he explains how the Intel Atom 1.6GHz is integrated with other hardware and seamlessly interacts with the operating system. Intel is working with other companies to shorten the time it takes for intelligent voice recognition devices to get to the market and is creating a unified platform for the same. Designed on operating systems like Moblin that work in mobile devices, it is made for high-end cars. “The ecosystem consists of digital 3-D maps, speech recognition for every function, and so on for this embedded system,” informs Rao.

However, the low-cost production capacities of SMBs will ensure a basic level of such a platform even on low-end cars. “I am impressed at the quality of our smaller partners,” says Sanjeev Keskar, country sales manager, Freescale Semiconductors. Take the case of Pricol. Its subsidiary, Pricol Technologies, is a product design engineering company involved in embedded system development and providing CAD services.

“We have our own R&D facilities and we are working with Freescale for support in making the application,” says AS Ramaseshan, COO, Pricol Technologies. Wind River, that is making the operating system for such devices, has made a prototype of the digital console at its Bangalore office.

“This has Bluetooth, a USB drive and speech recognition,” says Venkatesh Kumaran, country manager, India. The touch screen displays every critical element of engine performance when you choose to see it, plays music and movies, and can download content though a USB cable. Not surprisingly, some of the key components and even the final console will have players like Varroc and Pricol playing key roles to make it affordable. “In future, such cars will “talk” to other smart cars on the road,” says Kumaran.

That would enable closely spaced cars to move in unison (and react more quickly to problems than humans could). A road system filled with these cars wouldn’t even need traffic lights as the cars could just talk among themselves. As Intel’s Rao puts it, we’d all experience being Bond, at least in our cars.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News