Slashdot Mirror
Japanese Auto Makers Teaming Up To Create Standard OS
CNet is reporting that Japanese car manufacturers are teaming up to develop a standard automotive operating system. "Just as computer operating systems [...] allow multiple applications to communicate with one another, an automotive operating system enables different driving systems to work together. The standard automotive operating system from Japan will include everything from fuel injection, brakes and power steering to power windows. Currently, certain mechanical car parts are interchangeable from model to model. Smart car parts that operate off a common software standard would enable that kind of convenience to continue, while allowing them to communicate more easily with other smart components in a car."
TRON is an embedded OS that Japan tried to use as a general-purpose desktop OS as well back in the late '80s, but was stopped from doing so by a Federal Government lawsuit claiming it was anti-competitive:
http://www.tron.org/index-e.html
Or is this an extension to TRON? (The article is really slim), though it seems to be about OSEK:
http://www.osek-vdx.org/
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Don't be so naive, Every production model of car for the past few years has an embedded operating system. Many people improperly compare their car's OS to that of Windows desktop. There's a major problem with that comparison though. The software is made specifically not to crash and to be fail proof at (almost) every conceivable pitfall it may encounter. A better comparison would be to medical devices to keep people alive. When lives hang in the balance, a little more attention is paid to the details.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Currently, certain mechanical car parts are interchangeable from model to model.
Currently? Back in my teens, in the 80s, I hung out with a family that built street machines. There used to be this company called GMC and it had others called Chevrolet and Pontiac, et al. We could take a bell housing off a 66 Pontiac whatever and fit it perfectly to a 68 Chevrolet whatever. ALL water thermostat housings between all of these makes were the same. I can remember helping my dad with his 69 Ford Bronco to replace a cracked thermostat housing, and when we went to the junkyard the dude pulls out a huge box of ford thermostat housings -- even between Ford cars they were different. You could fit a Nova front-end to a Ventura and all the bolts matched. Anyone toying around with American cars from the 60s learned to love the GMs, especially Chevys....
GMCs, and especially Chevys, from the 60s, were God's gift to cars and auto mechanics and it was all interchangeable. Couple this with the raw power of those cars (yes yes, environment concerns and all that) and those are some of the best memories of my life....
Hehe, currently.... Reminds me of my daughter saying, "way back in the 90s...."
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
If we can get all the cars to use a common language, doing diagnostics could be made much easier. OBD2 that all cars sold in North America currently have, can be useful, but is quite limited in what it can do.
The development of a standard operating system for cars is not exactly groundbreaking news. OSEK-VDX, a cooperation between German and french manufacturers, exists since 1995. AUTOSAR is a newer set of standards for automative software where European and American (Ford, GM) companies have teamed up. As mentioned in a previous post, first implementations of AUTOSAR are expected for 2008. Both OSEK and AUTOSAR are not operating systems itself, but standards and specifications (like POSIX and TRON, correct me if I am wrong). Actually I'd be surprised if there were not something similar already in use by Japanese manufacturers. As for TRON, I always thought it is used mostly in consumer electronis.
This should make the individual components cheaper allowing them to use cheaper micro-controllers. Cars are increasingly comprised of smart components which communicate electronically, as opposed to analog or mechanical signals.
This means that the newer ECUs have a throttle command which is part of a message packet transmitted over a bus rather than a mechanical push/pull cable controlling the throttle lever on an engine. Even the engines that still have throttle levers aren't mechanical anymore, the lever is connected to a potentiometer which then converts the lever position into an analog signal which feeds into the ECU.
Its the natural progression that distributed systems again become more consolidated. Remember that this network inside your car is going to be electrically isolated from other systems. The likelihood of anyone hacking your car without physical access to the microcontrollers is slim to none. Unless they do something stupid like try to network this OS with outside systems which aren't wired to it.