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."
But will it run rinux?
According to another Yomiuri article, BMW, DaimlerChrysler and other European automakers are jointly developing a next-generation OS and are expected to complete a prototype in 2008. ...a year earlier.
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.
Microsoft has announced that it is partnering with a Japanese automaker to incorporate Windows Vista Auto Edition with all of their car systems.
In other news, family of 4 dies as their Japanese car careens off of a cliff after experiencing a BSOD in their Microsoft Windows Vista Auto Edition software.
And they said zombies weren't real!
Wow, this is truly going to be revolutionary, allowing automakers to finally produce truly interchangable parts. [/sarcasm] Anybody else feel pretty certain they'll still change the shape and size and mounting locations on every single part every year so that there will still be almost no compatibility between models and years and so forth? What does this really buy us?
A traffic jam?
"The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them..."
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
Can someone explain this article to me using a car analogy?
You seem to be under the illusion that your car doesn't already have one. Unless it was made before 1995 or so, it does. If it was made before 1995, it still might, depending on the make/model. It's not until you go back to about 1980 that you'll find a year where all cars had mechanical stuff instead of ECU's.
Basically, if your car has EFI, it has an OS. If it has a carburetor, maybe not.
Well to some degree, that's the point. Mercedes has already done testing running cars at 90 MPH just 2 inches apart through a network communication protocol. Part of the goal of this project is to come up with a standard for such a protocol and integrate it into the OS.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
It would bring a whole new meaning to "blue screen of death"
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I really hope they don't go the "OS for battleships" direction and just take a regular OS and tailor it for cars. An OS that is going to help operate a car should be built using signal logic and work like a low level state machine. Like this: http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/COSA.htm or at least build it around a functional lambda calculus based language like haskell or erlang (see wikipedia). The last thing we need is random segfaults while we're driving.
as an aside-- please don't critize my suggestion without at least first reading up on functional lambda calculus based programming languages and COSA.
Its already been done by others, hell even microsoft made some Windows CE modifications to make it automobile friendly. This is really only useful if they all actually USE the same protocols across the board. If everyone comes in and makes their own unique way of controlling each individual component it won't be real helpful.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
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.
A mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer, and a software engineer are driving along when they start heading downhill. The brakes go out, and as the passengers panic, the driver manages to just barely swing the car to safety, narrowly averting a short trip off of a tall cliff.
With the car stopped, the engineers all get out and discuss what must have gone wrong.
The mechanical engineer says "we must have lost a brake line or something."
The electrical engineer suggests there was a problem with the ABS system.
The software engineer suggests they all drive back up the hill and go back down to see if it happens again.
The Slashdotter tied up in the trunk mumbles "I, for one, eagerly await our new standard OS overlords."
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
Ha ha, crash? Crash? Get it? I think I'll punch myself in the face so that I can sleep through the next few retards that respond with the same lame ass joke.
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.
...only if there's a button on the steering wheel that transforms the car into a 20 foot tall battle robot. Or a sexbot. Or both. At the same time.
The Toyota Unicron. Yeah, yeah, gimme some of that.
Main competitor? The Kia GoBot.
Ha ha ha ha! Go-bots....
I think you mean a RED screen of death...
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.
An annoying side-effect of all the electronics in current cars is that it's become impossible to replace the sound system (or at least the head unit): all too often, the head unit is linked to the satnav display, and on more expensive cars, the stereo is a main interface element for the entire car (BMW iDrive and similar systems). Also, the HU is built into the dashboard, instead of being in a DIN slot.
This means you're stuck with the limited quality and features of the headunit, and adding things like an amplifier, CD changer, MP3 player and extra speakers (e.g. a subwoofer) are hard or impossible.
With a standard OS, it should be possible to separate the head unit from the rest of the car, and still use the HU to interface with the car.
This happened in Phoenix, Arizona.
Many years ago, when I was in college and poor, I bought a truly beat to death VW Baja for $800. It had tiny little wheels for drag racing for some odd reason, and great big sand wheels up front. The front end and the back end were fiberglass, with all the sheet metal cut off roughly with a torch; the front bumper was, I kid you not, the GAS TANK. I had to buy some new seat belts out of a wrecked beetle to bolt in because the originals had been cut out. The car sounded like a helicopter, you could barely hear yourself think. It had a souped-up 1800cc engine that was the greasiest, ugliest thing I'd ever seen in my life.
I really liked that car. It was fast as hell and totally terrifying to drive.
One time, my ex girlfriend tried to make fun of my car by flying past it in her mustang (over Camelback Mountain). I let her get just past me and I stomped on the gas; I flew past her and got the thing up over 100 mph before making the crest of the mountain (this was on the upward side, mind you).
Even better, one time I was sitting at a stoplight and this creepy ASU kid and his girlfriend were making fun of my car from their convertible. I looked over at them, and when the light turned green, stomped the accelerator and popped the clutch. The damn thing popped a wheelie and I almost had a heart attack. But it was worth it, the kid was so surprised he forgot to go and got cut off by traffic.
Still... I ended up selling it for the same 800 bucks to another college kid. He took it out in the desert, floored it, shot off the top of a sand dune, and obliterated the car. Amazingly, the kid survived and called me up to ask for his 800 bucks back! I said "what are you, nuts? Consider it a stupidity tax" and hung up.
Sigh... Poor car...
I know you are just making the obligatory "beowulf" joke but you aren't that far off. Modern auto electrical architectures consist of many computing nodes communicating on high speed subnets. Of course, on the vehicle, each node performs a distinct function. They are also not "commodity" hardware, but you get the point.
Oh no, I know they're there....but, I'm just that comfortable with it frankly. I was a little weird on my Vette when they came out with the C5. The salesman was taunting that the accelerator was 'drive by wire'. Frankly, I'm just a bit more comfy with mechanical control...I know how computers can blow up and be buggy.
My car after that, was an '86 911 Turbo...not a lot of computer on that one, and I really enjoyed it. It just felt more connected to the road being more mechanical.
But, alas, those are the things of yesteryear. With the damned stringent emissions getting more and more tight, about the only way you can wring out decent power in a car is with computer management. I know that ABS helps you stop better, but, I can't stand the damned things. I'd much rather brake mechanically...I know how to adjust for slide, etc if I lock it up.
I don't like that so much computer control takes a lot of wind out someone wanting to become a real shade tree mechanic. It is difficult to do these days. Back in the day, a person could get some basic tools, and do mods to their own cars to get performance, etc. Now, well, you need a lot more equipment and knowledge than simple mechanical know-how, and it makes it difficult for the avg. Joe Sixpack to power up/customize his car.
But, since this is the way we're going...if they could make a common OS for the car, common non-propietary methods of component interaction, at least it would help it in todays world, for the new shade tree mechanic to be able to work on, mod and customize his car. If it were an open source type system...there could be a sourceforge type site for people to work on mods for cars. Download a module....and redo the powercurve and air/fuel mixture so you could get more power, and not be as restricted by factory environmental settings.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It is great that the software in cars will be standardized, but how about the driving experience.
I drive different rental cars every week and I am amazed at how dissimilar the controls are.
I suggest that the automakers, or our government, make the controls and indicators for:
gear shifter, emergency brake, lights, turn signals, wipers, speedometer, fuel gauge, pedals, gas cap, side mirrors, window controls, emergency flasher, panel dimmer, power locks and cruise control, standardized on all cars.
How many accidents have occurred because the driver was looking for or trying to use a control incorrectly.
machinator omnis sine licentia
By law, they have to support OBD2 diagnostics; this spec provides a limited number of diagnostic indicators that (theoretically) can be accessed and interpreted the same on all vehicles. The OBD2 spec is even available - not officially, but Google is your friend.
So far so good - some standardization, albeit government enforced. But there's more; there's a lot more useful diagnostic information available from the vehicle systems than OBD2 shows. So the manufacturers extend the protocol and define other trouble codes and ways of accessing them. These extensions aren't documented, and they're often designed to be as obscure and impenetrable as possible. Every manufacturer has different proprietary extensions and they change them at whim.
The dealership service departments have the dedicated computer that talks to that manufacturer's cars; it knows all the codes. But independent service shops don't have those dedicated machines or any information about how to read the extended codes from a vehicle. The manufacturers refuse to provide any information to anyone at any price; you can't even buy the diagnostic machine from them unless you're one of their dealers.
They've been doing this for years; various lawsuits have come and gone but the manufacturers still won't share the information that mechanics need to service their cars effectively. The manufacturers like it this way; it drives more business to the dealership service departments and prevents third-party parts companies from making less-expensive replacement parts. This is the status quo; even the Japanese manufacturers play the same game.
So let's consider the possibility of a standardized automotive operating system or architecture. Would the manufacturers use it? If it offered greater reliability or reduced build costs they'd go for it. But before it hit the dealers they'd "fix" it so that their parts and service divisions would continue to enjoy their competitive advantages...
For those of us that happen to be happy with the stereo that came with the car, the upside is no more having to take the thing apart and hide it every time you leave the car somewhere and no more smashed windows and some wires hanging out of your dash when you come back to it...
I, for one, welcome our new fully integrated un-steal-able car stereo overlords!
As an experienced automotive embedded software engineer, I can say for sure this OS standard will bring nothing to the industry that isn't already in place. There are extensive standards for diagnostics, operating systems, safety systems, and pretty much everything else you can think of. I think the enthusiastic nature of many of the replies to this thread is an indication of a larger problem with how the US automakers are portrayed. Most people assume that it's good simply because the Japanese are doing it. Had a US automaker come out with this announcement, they would have be destroyed for being so far behind. Over and over again the media gives the Japanese and Europeans credit for technologies/strategies that have been in place for years. While they do bring a great deal of new technology to the table, no one gives US automakers credit for their contributions. For example, those of you BMW drivers (me included), your transmissions are most likely GM hydra-matics (http://prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=21160 ). BMW also has widely used Chrysler developed engines in the past (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritec_engine). Mercedes drivers might be interested to learn that Mercedes does not even have an engine software department. Nearly 100% of this task is outsourced to Bosch, who supplies the same software to numerous other auto manufacturers (as well as the electronics to go with it). This trend of sharing and partnerships is present all throughout the industry and the framework for interchangeably sharing software has existed for years. In short there is really no technology gap from one auto manufacturer to the next (the exception being hybrid development at Toyota and fuel cells at GM). Everyone is buying the same systems from the same suppliers.
The quality difference comes from US executives looking to increase the per vehicle margin by saving 5 cents here and 10 cents there at the cost of long term quality. In fact most of you would be interested to know that your 2007 Toyotas have powertrain electronics technology dating back to 1997. This is not a bad thing as it leads to high reliability, but don't be fooled into thinking that something is high tech just because it is Japanese. The bottom line is that whether its BMW, Toyota, GM, Ford, etc...most vehicles share many of the same parts and it's the cost reduction mindset of US executives that leads to the quality differentiation.
Really, why would different manufacturers want to make things more interoperable? This would in the long run reduce the need to buy particular brands, especially for repair parts, and cut into thir bottom lines.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You can't even compare it to embedded Linux -- which is generally rock-solid and capable of running in almost anything -- because Linux is not real-time. (Neither is Windows or OS X or BSD, by the way.)
I mean, sure, there are plenty of so-called "real-time" applications that these OSes work perfectly well for. Audio, for instance -- Protools, Ardour, etc. But it's a bit like Java -- while on average, you know how long something is going to take to process, you don't have any guarantees. (In Java's case, the garbage collector might decide to run at exactly the moment you need something important to happen.)
"real-time" means that you can actually guarantee, often with mathematical proofs, that a given thing will happen by a given deadline, and usually the deadlines are much shorter than anything a modern desktop OS can handle. It means you can say things like "If the sensor reads foo, I need a shutdown command sent to the nuclear reactor within 20 milliseconds." Done properly, you can actually guarantee beyond a shadow of a doubt that this will happen -- and in 20 milliseconds, not 21. On a desktop OS, there's just no guarantee -- for all you know, a filesystem driver, of all things, could lock the whole IO system up for half a second.
That's not to say that you can't make Linux realtime -- there are projects to do so. It's also not to say that you can't build a desktop out of a realtime OS. But right now, as far as I know, there are no real-time OSes which are used for anything other than embedded apps which actually need the real-time capability.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
So, I'm sorry, but your desire to tweak your car comes a very distant second to my desire to have safer air.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)