| (2003.04.25) |
Shipping starts on May 2
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| Sanyo Electric exhibited a sample of s portable navigation system |
On April 24th, the company held Microsoft Automotive & Telematics Conference in Japan in Tokyo, targeted at manufacturers and service/contents providers associated with Windows Automotive to explain the outline of Windows Automotive 4.2. Also exhibited at the conference were Windows Automotive equipment and associated equipment, as well as relevant technologies.
_ Windows Automotive transforms the car to a .NET terminal
Windows Automotive is an embedded OS based on Windows CE for use with car-mounted terminals. In 1998, the concept of “Auto PC” with Windows CE 2.0 was announced, and the name was later changed to “Windows Automotive”.
Windows Automotive can be compared to traditional car-mounted equipment such as car navigation system, or car audio with the added function of car telematics such as PIM or data communication. It is based on Windows CE, but the user interface is very different from PCs or PDAs with a voice interface provided specifically for in-car use. Windows CE for Automotive is already adopted by terminals such as Clarion CADIAS and Toyota G-Book, and used by car models such as BMW 745i, and CITROEN Xsara on the market.
New functions on Windows Automotive 4.2 include the Automotive UI Toolkit, the .NET Compact Framework, compliance with open communication standards, and new components.
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| Equipment and cars that have adopted Windows CE for Automotive. Volvo and Mitsubishi cars. | Functions of Windows Automotive 4.2 |
“Automotive UI Toolkit” is a tool to design the user interface (“UI”). Not only does car-mounted equipment need a unique UI for safety reasons, many UIs must be created for a variety of terminals, which requires a lot of man hours for UI design. “Automotive UI (“AUI”) was drawn up as the car-mounted UI for Windows Automotive, simplifying the development of skin to support various types of terminals and uses.
“.NET Compact Framework” is a version of .NET Framework for devices with limited processing capabilities such as car-mounted equipment and PDAs. Services supporting .NET can be used seamlessly from car-mounted equipment.
Communication functions were strengthened to support open standards such as Bluetooth, IEEE 802.11, IEEE 802.1x, IEEE 1394, VoIP, real-time messaging functions (RTC/SIP client), IPv6, and car-mounted optical network standard “MOST”. It also comes with browser components equivalent to Internet Explorer 6.0 and multimedia components. Some fine-tuning was also done, such as shortened start-up time and map display.
On the other hand, “SAPI” (speech recognition composite interface) or “Transaction safe FAT” (a technique to enhance reliability for writing data to storage) that were developed for Windows Automotive were taken into the core of Windows CE and can now be used outside of Windows Automotive.
_ Demonstration of car-mounted Messenger
In the keynote speech of Microsoft Automotive & Telematics Conference in Japan, Bob McKenzie, general manager for Microsoft Automotive Business Unit, and Motoki Hirano, general manager for ITS Supervision Unit explained the company’s strategy for telematics and the outline of Windows Automotive 4.2. Windows Automotive is playing a significant role in Microsoft’s vision of .NET. It was emphasized that it is one of the components that realizes “a lifestyle with the possibility to connect anytime, anywhere with any device”.
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| Bob Mc Kenzie, General Manager of Microsoft Automotive Business Unit. | Motoki Hirano, General Manager of Microsoft ITS Supervision Unit. |
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| Anytime, anywhere, any deviceÔÂ |
Several demonstrations were conducted with the car-mounted device, the server at the conference venue and a cellular phone, to illustrate real-life Windows Automotive usage scenarios. One of the demonstrations was to make a restaurant booking from a car-mounted device, and the location of the restaurant was to be shown on a map followed by a car navigation session (however, due to some problems the map did not appear during the demo).
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| Demonstration of restaurant reservation. After a restaurant is selected from a list shown on the car-mounted terminal, further details are downloaded from the server and the reservation can be made. When the booking is confirmed, the location of the restaurant is shown on the map, but there were problems during the demonstration | |
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| Demonstration of real-time messenger. The status of the other user is shown on the car-mounted terminal. As with Windows Messenger, blue shows that the user is on-line and red shows that he or she is off-line. The user with the handle icon is driving, and the one with the ѯÔÂmark is at a stop. | Messages received are read out with a synthetic voice. |
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| Voice chat is possible with VoIP. | |
The other demo involved two car-mounted devices that conducted real-time messaging via cellular phones. On the screen of the car-mounted device, the status of the user participating in the messenger (whether the user is in the car, at a stop etc.,) was shown. There were also demonstrations of exchanging voice messages using VoIP, transferring multimedia files from a home server to the car-mounted machine via wireless LAN, and playing them.
_ a sample of Windows CE version of the portable navigation system “GORILLA” was exhibited.
In another keynote speech, Mr. Yasuda from Panasonic Automotive Systems (“PAS”), a subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd, discussed the development work of the car-mounted “G-BOOK” that utilizes Windows CE for Automotive. He revealed that the tools PAS had developed for Windows CE for Automotive were included in Windows Automotive 4.2.
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| Mr. Yasuda from Panasonic Automotive Systems, a subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. | A block diagram of a G-BOOK terminal. In addition to the main 32 bit CPU, it is equipped with a sub-CPU for the touch panel and the navigation equipment. |
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| Windows CE has an independent memory space for each process, so memory spaces of other processes are not damaged. |
Besides keynote speeches and technical sessions, car-mounted equipment using Windows CE, processors, graphic chips, and voice synthesis/ speech recognition technologies were displayed in the exhibition hall. We will report these through photographs mainly.
_ Adoption rate depends on infrastructure and applications
At the press conference held after the keynote speeches, Microsoft made clear on their intent to support the global development activities by Japanese companies as part of their strategy regarding car telematics by Windows Automotive.
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| Sanyo Electronics displayed a sample of the Windows CE version of their portable navigation ѦORILLAÔÐ It is equipped with a PC card slot and a CF slot, and does not have a local drive. Commercialization is said to be under consideration. | A sample of a car navigation system with Windows CE exhibited by Denso. It may use the services of G-BOOK as the company is an affiliate of Toyota. |
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| The appraisal board Ѳolution Gear 2ÔÂof the embedded car-mounted ѵR5500AÔÂCPU by NEC. It aims to work at more than 1GHz from the latter part of 2003. | Car-mounted video chip ѦRiTTÔÂby Matsushita Electric. |
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| Car-mounted video chip ѲM722ÔÂby Silicone Motion. It can output different pictures on the front seat and the back seat. | Car-mounted network by Standard Micro Systems. It is noted for its high speed and noise resistant optical wiring, but the traditional metallic wiring has the merit of being cheap and easy to rewire. The company conducted a demonstration of transferring video using metallic wiring. |
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| Animo¡¦ voice synthesis technology. As speech and sound are processed separately, it makes it simple to have a structure whereby the server processes speech, and the car-mounted terminal processes sound. | Voice recognition technology ѵOREROÔÂby Asahi Kasei. It provides voice recognition/voice synthesis technology in collaboration with Animo. |
The demonstrations shown during this event were not about concrete services or contents, but about assumed scenarios. The exhibits were mainly about informative displays for evaluations, or components technology. As there were no concrete usage of the products, it was difficult to imagine the nature of the services. Mr. Hirano, general manager of Microsoft acknowledged that for car telematics to become popular, improvements in the infrastructure of communications as well as the introduction of services and contents specific to car telematics were necessary. It seems that more time is needed for Microsoft to draw up a concrete strategy for car telematics.
Impress PC Watch
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