Introducing a harmonized and generic cross-platform interface between a Vehicle and the Cloud

Vehicle-to-Cloud connectivity is opening up a vehicle's internal data and function portfolio to the outside world. This sets up new chances by being able to create new customer services that enable new business models and opportunities. However, current approaches for Vehicle-to-Cloud connectivity tend to build technological silos by being restricted to a single manufacturer or model, a single functionality or to the automotive domain which excludes seamless connectivity to other domains such as IoT or IT. Hence, a harmonized and generic cross-platform interface, a so called Vehicle Abstraction Layer, between the vehicle and the cloud has to be developed. A key issue within this task is the design of an abstract description of data and functionality provided by a vehicle. Such a description allows to automatically generate code in order to bind any vehicle being described to a cloud system. This paper introduces such an abstract description by using Eclipse Vorto, an open source device description framework. It also presents the technology used as well as a description scheme. Furthermore, the approach is illustrated by an example scenario.