Linux Takes On Automotive Apps

loconet writes "Linux Devices has released an article about Metrowerks setting out to drive Linux further into the automotive telematics market by launching what it calls "Automotive Grade Linux," a version of Linux enhanced with non-traditional features to address the specific requirements of automotive telematics."

Comments

Errors

[niteice]

Kernel Panic: Your engine a splode!

Re:Errors

[agent dero]

After going to classes all day with far too many foreigh professors that have heavy accents. That was too funny, My sides hurt.

Urm, to keep it on topic, I for one welcome our new linux-powered-automotive-overlords

HA!

[Jozer99]

Your Corola has been rooted!

Let's hope it's not Gentoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Only 17 days left until we can leave hon, I'm just compiling starter.so"

Re:Let's hope it's not Gentoo!

[dcstimm]

well we could just run a stage3 install of starter.so but you wont be able to drive as fast. Sorry

Something new?

[erick99]

I hadn't heard of Automotive Telematics before, nor did I know it was a $14 billion market and, even more surprising (to me), Microsoft has a version of CE that was released in 2002 and updated in 2003 that is specifically for that market. Well, you learn something new everyday within the hallowed halls of SlashDot. That said, I would think that Linux would be an ideal platform for this because it does meet the requirements for telematics as set forth in the article. I wonder how M$ will respond? Or, is it a big enough pie for everyone to have a slice?

If Operating Systems Drove Your Car to the Store

[weston]

"UNIX

You get in the car and type grep store. You are given a list of 400 7-11's in your area and 50 grocery stores. After picking one and reaching speeds of 200 miles per hour en route, you arrive at the barber shop."

-- If Operating Systems Drove Your Car to the Store

Re:Strange article

[erick99]

The article states:

What automotive telematics is not

Automotive telematics does not include areas of automotive computing that involve powertrain management (such as fuel-injection microcontrollers), or what Metrowerks terms "body/safety/chassis" computing applications. These applications are typically based on proprietary process-based real-time OSes such as QNX, VxWorks, AE, LynxOS and others.

Re:One problem:

[IamGarageGuy 2]

Let's not be too alarmist here. This is the automotive market here, bad press for them is the deathnell of a product. If anybody is going to test, retest and test again it will be them. I am not a fanboy but I know that this is a market segment that relies heavily on reliable products and will spend untold millions if not billions just on testing alone.

Telematics

[OneNonly]

Was expecting this device / software to be for general control of car systems (engine performance, monitoring etc) but from here:

http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS6531324140.html

What is "telematics"?

Telematics is a fairly new word sometimes defined as the combination of telecommunications and computing, or, alternatively, "telemetry" (radio-based instrumentation) and "informatics" (information management using statistics and computers).

Automotive telematics, then, is the application of telematics to the automotive market. Metrowerks lists examples of automotive telematics that include:

* Call center services such as GM OnStar
* In-car navigation and guidance systems
* Car/cellphone integration (for example, for hands-free operation through the radio and a dash-mounted microphone)
* XM radio and Becker Online Pro
* Fleet management systems such as Qualcomm Omnitracs

What automotive telematics is not

Automotive telematics does not include areas of automotive computing that involve powertrain management (such as fuel-injection microcontrollers), or what Metrowerks terms "body/safety/chassis" computing applications. These applications are typically based on proprietary process-based real-time OSes such as QNX, VxWorks, AE, LynxOS and others.

Re:What about TRON?

[belmolis]

One factor may be that TRON is basically a real-time embedded OS, whereas the applications for which automotive Linux is intended are not subject to real-time constraints. I don't know TRON very well, but it is likely easier to write code for a non real-time OS than for TRON. Another factor may have to do with internationalizing textual interfaces. Linux supports Unicode. The last I knew, TRON used only its own competing encoding and did not support Unicode. (I know that TRON fans consider the TRON encoding superior. Even if they are right, Unicode has received much more support outside of Japan so Unicode is probably a better bet for the automotive market.) A non-technical factor may be that TRON is Japanese. There may be a bit of the NIH syndrome at work.

Re:Awesome

[Richard Dick Head]

Well I don't know about Quake, but running a racer game with The Kernel reading your steering wheel and pedal movements, and outputing scenery to some flat panels pasted on your windows would be WAY cool. Then just so you don't have to take em off, use pwnboard cameras to give you a 360 FOV through the front.

Can you say Penguin Power bumper sticker? :D

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