For the development of intelligent vehicles, new technologies such as chips, operating systems, application ecology, human-computer interaction, network bandwidth, cloud services, big data, and AI technology will be concentrated on the cockpit. Lin Yu, Head of UX/UI Design at Luxoft INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, shared his insights on the evolution of smart cockpits and his insights on 3D digitally enabled automotive and HMI user experience trends.
Lin Yu, head of UX/UI design business in China at Luxoft Italia
Focus on software, boost software-defined cars
Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, Luxoft is a highly global European company specializing in automotive software or cross-industry software engineering and design services, with a total of three main sectors: banking and finance, software engineering and digital transformation of cross-industry IT technology, and automotive business units focusing on software engineering development and design services.
Its automotive division has more than 15 years of automotive experience, serving major OEMs and major Tier1s, focusing on providing four service modules, namely automatic driving, digital cockpit, intelligent networking services, and testing and verification services.
Overall, Luxoft hopes to empower OEMs to realize true software-defined vehicles through these four modules. Through big data, Luxoft has successfully assisted BMW to realize the platform of future autonomous driving, and continues to cooperate with Daimler Benz in HMI design and development, and Mercedes-Benz's next-generation new electric vehicle EQS is also realized by the Luxoft team from design to final development.
From digital cockpit to smart cockpit
Lin Yu believes that the trend evolution of the digital cockpit has the following four major priorities: one is more powerful hardware improvement; the other is a higher degree of customization and personalization; the third is the function, data twin and information transmission realized through cloud networking and 5G technology; and the fourth is that ADAS autonomous driving related functions have more demand for visual interaction.
The overall trend will be more integrated, including after-sales need to consider the core OS support of the vehicle, and then to the software platform and architecture of the application side, and finally to the components and decoupling of third-party services will be more close. Therefore, the digital cockpit has officially transformed into a smart cockpit, which is mainly reflected in the following aspects.
The improvement of hardware performance mainly starts from the user's starting point, functional starting point and demand starting point. It needs to have a more powerful computing chip core, not just more screens, or larger screens, including the hardware decoupling of the whole vehicle like more sensors and sensing elements. In addition to the growing demand for computing power, Luxoft believes that the visual demand will be larger and larger, and the next product will also hope to have a higher resolution and refresh rate, etc., which can be combined with more functions to provide users with a richer experience through 3D visualization and interactivity.
A higher degree of customization and personalization, customization is mainly from the perspective of the main engine factory to talk about, the main engine factory hopes to combine what kind of voice assistant, combined with what kind of third-party ecological service to the user end. The premise of personalization is that it must be from the user's point of view, and even combined with AI artificial intelligence, so that it has a higher degree of emotion and a higher degree of initiative to provide an adaptive user experience. It will not simply be an HMI through the screen human-machine interface, it will be a vehicle with different ECUs, different BCM, and need to match the needs of the scene for strategic design of the entire architecture.
Adapting to overseas markets is also a service and function end. Before customization and personalization, there is also an important issue, that is, localization, which needs to meet the needs of geography and culture before talking about personalization. Different countries need to decouple different voice assistant services, different providers, to adapt to local usage habits of network streaming. There are also channels like radio, in addition to the user experience, including the country will have some mandatory norms on some frequencies. More importantly, the country and destination of the sea will involve more languages, in this part of how to achieve effective control, Luxoft UX/UI team has a team of language experts, they assist Mercedes-Benz, assist the car factory to carry out different cross-language text display control, semantic review. In addition, there are navigation functions, car travel and navigation are closely related, in the navigation part of how to understand different map data to a higher extent, it is also very important to do the customization and adaptation required by the car factory.
Norms and regulations. More and more experts and peers in China have begun to pay attention to foreign norms and regulations, and for Luxoft, it has a wealth of understanding and project experience with different tools, different methods of human-computer interaction or HMI testing and verification, including NHTSA or ESOP.
Network Information Security. In the future intelligent, networked cars, the issue of network information security can not be ignored, including the European and American markets will be more and more strict control of this part of the norms, 2022 launched UNECE R155 specifications clearly limit our cars in the network security part to a certain extent, in order to deliver to the hands of car owners.
On the whole, Luxoft has a very rich experience in mass production overseas, and can assist various car manufacturers and OEMs to continue to make sea adaptation services abroad, from the combination of early third-party services, including the entire testing process, from the overseas planning end to the final report are able to assist in the realization, but also adapt to the mainstream of the industry different tools and languages.
3D digitalization empowers HMI
3D digital empowerment of the automotive industry for many years, the design and development of automobiles has been applied earlier, when VR technology is mature, 3D digitalization has enabled the testing and review of application modeling design.
With more and more attention to digital cockpits and intelligent cockpits, in recent years, vr and 3D digital empowerment HMI design and development, but also gradually developed, its visual presentation has also been through 3D tools to achieve faster development process and test verification.
The advantage of 3D digital empowerment HMI development is that it can quickly approach a more realistic driving experience, and there is no need to wait for the prototype to come out to test the HMI and the entire driving environment. It can be faster and higher to match the design style and the overall interior chamber, including the layout, including the use of color and visual style.
It can support faster design verification in the short term, design verification includes font size, the size of the keys is not easy to operate, and it is best satisfied that we can better support agile development in the entire large environment of our software-defined cars.
The trend of 3D digitalization enabling HMI development will be increasing.
Luxoft to the 3D digital HMI development and design process to another level, hope that the future HMI design development and the entire process is more adaptable, Luxoft self-developed LUVRE tool, which can quickly support the design team to carry out zero-code design verification, including can be more quickly let the leader bring VR headset, faster feel our design, accelerate the review process.
In addition to the information presented by true 3D, in addition to the ADAS to help filter the information presented to the driver to understand and control the road environment, the vehicle status and energy flow can also show the situation of the vehicle in different driving modes. A more visually refined experience gives users more than just a better connection between the owner and the car.
Imagine the HMI breaking the screen before interaction
With A team of XR experts, 3D designers, interaction specialists, 3D data specialists and software engineers, Luxoft believes it can continue to help empower OEMs and partners to embrace the next smart cockpit evolution and user experience.
Lin Yu said that his team is trying to break the interaction in front of the screen by using ar and other technologies, and he also envisions whether the next cockpit environment can combine the entire three-dimensional space and 3D cockpit space to a higher extent to truly achieve a new interactive experience. They found that AR interaction has the biggest drawback for users, that is, there is no way to give users more substantial tactile feedback, and past interactions are actually more affirmative interactions by pointing at the screen. The AR-E project was produced from the Luxoft UXUI design team from the early industrial design to the visual implementation of 3D modeling, and finally the entire concept.
Luxoft's imagination of the future digital cockpit breaks the barrier that the traditional HMI only interacts with the screen hardware, and combines the entire intelligent cockpit 3D environment and three-dimensional space to carry out a new interaction of the whole vehicle.
For the future of smart cockpits and user experience, Luxoft hopes to become a trusted partner, thinking together to create business value, create the ability to promote software independence, and accelerate large-scale engineering to achieve a better user experience and produce more competitive products.