An Automotive HMI Architecture Based on a Mobile Operating System

Abstract

Integrating a mobile operating system (OS) into the vehicle as foundation for the vehicle's information system is limited to the capabilities of original manufactures, as it is an integral part of the engineering process. Taking advantage of designing and engineering an electric vehicle from scratch, we built up the HMI system architecture based on Android from the early design phase on. We designed the architecture in a way that it gives access to third party developers during the overall engineering process and beyond. In this paper we discuss the engineering process, the features of the system, the difficulties we struggled with and emphasize the advantages of this setup for lower- and medium-class vehicles.