RE: Sony5 Jan 2023 12:24
Colin Barnden via Linkedin
Another important #CES2023 release is the Sony Honda Motor Co., Ltd. #EV brand, #Afeela. According to the release "Afeela will attempt to embody three main themes, #autonomy, #augmentation, and #affinity." It will be based on Qualcomm’s #Snapdragon #digital #chassis.
Privately-owned passenger vehicles will not be autonomous anytime soon, so the link with Qualcomm is likely to involve Arriver, meaning the vehicle will support "supervised automation," not anything autonomous. Whatever "affinity" means is anyone's guess. Sometimes you can take alliteration too far, but this is CES and everyone wants a catchy soundbite.
Augmentation is a real trend and one part of the #immersive #user #experience #IUX. The IUX will combine #eyegaze, #gesture, #voice, #touch and #audio, along with #HD displays in the #cabin, supported by #5G #connectivity, #cloud #compute and over-the-air updates #OTA. An #augmented #reality #HUD on the windshield will transform the human-vehicle interface #HVI to project #safety critical information directly into the driver's line of sight, ensuring they can keep their eyes on the road. This trend was discussed in detail by Junko Yoshida writing in The Ojo-Yoshida Report "Mind the Gap: #ADAS Pitfalls in 2023" (https://lnkd.in/dMNRTJdh)
Eye-gaze and gesture will be provided by #eyetracking companies like Seeing Machines, while high-performance processors such as Qualcomm's Snapdragon Ride #Flex #SoC and NVIDIA's #Thor show the route to merging the driving and #****pit processing onto a single #SoC. Zonal controllers from Ambarella Inc, indie Semiconductor and OMNIVISION will perform specialist #incabin processing.
Afeela is just the first example of an #automaker coming to understand the biggest trend in the post-smartphone era is a revolution in the automobile cabin. Everyone else will follow in the coming year, as the realization hits home that the billions of dollars spent on autonomy were wasted, and automakers have better opportunities to make money from providing exciting features and services in the cabin.
The stage is now set for an epic race between Apple (#Siri), Google (#Assistant), Amazon (#Alexa) and Cerence Inc. to rethink the in-cabin experience. Expect automakers, tier-1 suppliers and #bigtech to deploy billions on R&D and M&A to secure their place in this race.
We don't yet know how the pieces of this trend fit together. But we can now see all the key pieces and the critical players.
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