Visteon showcases virtual dashboard innovations at CES

Visteon, an automotive dashboard electronics technology company, has been showcasing its latest innovations at CES 2020.

The company says the showcase includes a range of technology solutions “designed to enhance safety and the driving experience by enabling the transformation of cockpits to all-digital environments”.

Visteon displayed cockpit electronics technology platforms in four core areas:

• Driver Information: Industry-leading digital clusters and multi-display modules
• SmartCore: Industry-first cockpit domain controllers
• DriveCore: Enhanced safety domain controllers for Level 2-plus automated driving
• Infotainment: Scalable Android-based infotainment solutions

Digital displays are key enabler of the cockpit of the future, and as a highlight of its CES exhibit, Visteon debuted a new digital display technology that delivers exceptional brightness and contrast with a rich color gamut.

This patent-pending technology is designed to bridge the gap between LCD and OLED display technologies, keeping rigorous automotive requirements in mind.

Visteon also premiered a flexible rotating glass cockpit, which can bend around the driver in sport mode or bend back to flat mode to allow the front passenger to view the display.

Furthermore, Visteon demonstrated the integration between its SmartCore cockpit domain controller and DriveCore ADAS/automated driving technologies.

These cockpit innovations establish a consistent human-machine interaction (HMI) experience between the driver and vehicle, enabling vehicles to seamlessly enable advanced automated safety functions, which will help smooth the transition from Level 2-plus to higher levels of autonomy.

Sachin Lawande, president and CEO, Visteon, says: “The cockpit is evolving to a fully digital environment with multiple curved, flexible displays that show information about the driving environment, vehicle dynamics and safety, as well as connected multimedia content.

“This transition requires the development of several new technologies to enhance the complete driving experience. As a global leader in multi-display modules and centralized computers, we show our latest innovations that address this digital transformation at CES.”

Driver information

Digital cockpit displays are becoming larger, curved and flexible, with multiple displays integrated with a glass cover lens that gives the entire system a seamless and high-quality look and feel.

At CES, Visteon showed innovations ranging from 3D clusters with eye-catching pop-out safety alerts to its new, breakthrough display that delivers pure, deep black and vibrant colors with high brightness – without sacrificing reliability.

Infotainment solutions for connected cars

Visteon is presenting scalable Android infotainment solutions for seamless connectivity including seamless integration with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay technologies for smartphone projection.

In addition to this functionality, Visteon also provides an onboard artificial intelligence-based voice assistant with natural language understanding – tailored for in-car use without the need for cloud connectivity.

SmartCore cockpit domain controllers

The next generation of SmartCore – Visteon’s industry-first domain controller that launched on production vehicles in 2018 – now seamlessly connects HMI across multiple display domains – including the digital cluster, infotainment, rear-seat infotainment, surround view, and in-cabin sensing of driver drowsiness, attentiveness and facial recognition.

With its robust computing power, this enhanced SmartCore elevates the user experience while managing system-level cost and providing efficiencies in weight and power consumption.

Enhanced DriveCore autonomous driving controller

At CES, Visteon showed an enhanced iteration of DriveCore, its open, scalable platform for addressing multiple levels of vehicle automation, with a focus on Level 2-plus.

DriveCore consists of the hardware, in-vehicle middleware, and PC-based software to enable sensor fusion and process AI/machine learning algorithms for advanced Level 2 functionality.

Visteon introduced an updated DriveCore Studio development environment announced earlier this year, which allows developers to leverage Microsoft Azure Cloud – Microsoft’s global, hyper-scale intelligent cloud solution – to develop, test and validate autonomous driving algorithms.

This new version allows developers to compare two automated driving algorithms simultaneously, helping meet the computing demands of Level 2-plus systems.

CES 2020 marked Visteon’s 21st year as an exhibitor, making it one of the longest-running show participants in the automotive industry.