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Japanese Auto Makers Teaming Up To Create Standard OS

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the specialized-mechanics-heard-weeping dept.

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."

30 of 266 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    But will it run rinux?

  2. A day late and a dollar short... by RollTissue · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:A day late and a dollar short... by Spazntwich · · Score: 5, Funny

      And in keeping with cultural automotive tradition, the European computer will be faster, more expensive, sexier, and give you blowjobs when it's not too busy crashing, while the Japanese model will be reliable, affordable, efficient, and do little beyond transmogrifying your loan into tentacles and then proceeding to rape you with them.

    2. Re:A day late and a dollar short... by yog · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well the Japanese pretty much dominate the world automotive market so it's likely that their standard will win eventually. Besides, if the OS they are developing is for Japanese systems, why would they even care if BMW and Daimler come up with one for their own cars, unless there's some competitive advantage to marketing the OS to other cars, like Windows on PC's. I don't see any advantage here; it's just a way to share development resources.

      --
      it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
    3. Re:A day late and a dollar short... by Volante3192 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I can just see the commercials now:

      "Hi, I'm a Mercedes."

      "And I'm a Toyota."

      (And it's all downhill from here. Apologies to Mercedes. Honestly, I have no clue about anything automotive, I just felt it was a good name to use.)

    4. Re:A day late and a dollar short... by nonsequitor · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Sounds like the Auto Industry is finally catching up to the avionics industry in this regard. The way avionics handled this issue was instead of releasing software, they released a set of requirements for a partitioned operating system. Then the specific vendor has to implement that template.

      Some of the features are a pre-emptable time slicing OS. It defines a number of application slots or partitions which are completely isloated from one another. Each partition then is assigned a quota or multiple quotas of CPU time. For instance 7 ms out of every 200 ms. Each partition is given control of its own resources, a set amount of RAM and Memory, mostly flash based.

      This development model allows multiple vendors to easily work together to provide industrial grade saftey critical systems. The OS and applications are independently certified for their class of application, and the OS would have a max level of certification allowed for it.

      While the automotive industry does not have the same certification issues the avionics industry has, I think this is a long over step towards consolidating all the distributed systems within a car. This makes higher level applications possible which link to the microprocessors controlling the brakes, suspension, all-wheel drive, etc...

      I don't think its out of the question to start seeing 3rd party software add-ons which can be installed on any car running this OS to provide enhanced capabilities like automatic parking like described in the article. It may even become possible to retrofit a car without one of these systems with the necessary sensors and equipment to add these new capabilities after market.

      This is where the boating industry is going at the moment since boats have a much longer life expectancy than cars, but they use a lot of the same microprocessors and communications buses.

      Needless to say, its going to be interesting to see what the hacking community can do with this.

    5. Re:A day late and a dollar short... by HTTP+Error+403+403.9 · · Score: 4, Funny

      ...transmogrifying your loan into tentacles and then proceeding to rape you with them.
      Is that how they produce that new car smell?
      --
      I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
    6. Re:A day late and a dollar short... by nonsequitor · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    7. Re:A day late and a dollar short... by DarenN · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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. Bing! This is what it's all about. The motor industry is a amorphous blob of highly competitive car makers (called OEM's) who buy from component manufacturers. As cars get more complicated more code is required (and as I work with this a bit, I can tell you it's a LOT of code). But it's on ECU's which have to work together in some odd combinations. Because you can order functionality (or not order it) in many ways per model of car, and most of it is software controlled, the communication between the components gets increasingly complicated. The component manufacturers responded by selling complete systems, which could be tested together and kludged for performance and all sorts of other stuff. The problem now is that these manufacturers have a lot of leverage, because if you want one component from them, you're stuck with a whole system.

      The international version of this is called AUTOSAR and is a 2,000 page specification that details the communication interfaces between ECU's. The ideal is that you could take an AUTOSAR compliant ECU and plug it into an AUTOSAR enabled car, and magically things will just work. It's still at the early stages despite it being around for years, and most of the major manufacturers are involved. They fight like cats and dogs, so this could be a splinter group of OEM's doing their own thing because they're sick of AUTOSAR.
      --
      Rational thought is the only true freedom
  3. I thought this was what TRON was for? by WillAdams · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  4. Re:Oblig. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    A traffic jam?

  5. Oblig. by spankey51 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them..."

    --
    -ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
  6. car os != desktop os by SolusSD · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  7. Its been done by BitZtream · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
  8. Re:Oh, yeah, I love the idea of an OS on my car. by CaptainPatent · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  9. Re:News of the Day by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    Then again there was the other news piece where the driver was asked to authorize or deny the deployment of the air-bag, when he crashed into the lamp-post.

    --
    Jumpstart the tartan drive.
  10. A group of engineers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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."

  11. Currently? by Himring · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
    1. Re:Currently? by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You think Americans were "good" Germans have the standardization of things down pat.

      It's why HPA motorports was able to create a 500 Hp Beetle using nothing more than common VW Parts.

      With minor work for engine bay space and engine mounts, you can bolt up a brand new Audi TT engine to a '79 Rabbit. I can't even begin to name all the parts that are common between my '98 Jetta and my '86 Jetta. Heck, 10 minutes with the engine blocks and you'll start to see similarities between the 1.8L Gasser and my 1.9 TDI.

      Furthermore, every single part in my VW has a part number. Every one. I'm doing some custom wiring for rear fogs, even a wire has a VW part number. I walked into the dealer and told him I wanted XXX-YYY-ZZZZ and he told me it'd be a few days and $3. If anyone gets a chance to look in ETKA, there is an option to "see what all vehicles this part number fits". It's absolutely mind boggling.

    2. Re:Currently? by MaWeiTao · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Furthermore, every single part in my VW has a part number.


      That's not unique to VW. Practically every automaker today has a part number for every last component in their cars. Among other things I can find out which components are shared with previous generations of my Honda, other Honda models and even Japanese domestic models by looking at part numbers. The same applies to my father's Buick.

      Secondly, an Audi TT engine isn't just going to "bolt" into a 1979 Rabbit. Today's Rabbit follows a very similar layout to a '79 Rabbit and a TT is essentially a Golf/Rabbit with different body panels. I'll grant you that, but internally the cars are quite different. Nevermind that the chassis has been revised numerous times to meet exceedingly strict safety standards. There are changing emissions regulations which have necessitated the addition of various components and movement of others. Then there's the modernization of a multitude of other components, like the braking system and it's anti-lock brakes. Then there's the ECU and all the electrical wiring the old Rabbit didn't have. And then on the simplest level there's the fact that the '79 engine block and transmission are considerably different from what's used today.

      I know some guys tend to stretch the meaning of "bolt-on" modifications but this is really pushing it. There are guys who do engine swaps between cars based on the same platform and for the same year and even then they can't just drop in the new engine. If any automakers allow for easy swapping of components I'd argue it's the Americans. And that's only because they have the habit of releasing the same exact vehicle under multiple brands with minor cosmetic differences.

      I expect to see a similar outcome from a "standardized" OS. The system may be based on a standard base, but every model and generation will be different to the point that they won't work with anyone else. There's the risk, of course, of this sort of technology locking out the owner from being able to do anything to the car. With a sophisticated system it could check to see if modifications have been made, for example, and perhaps render the vehicle inoperable because it's been deemed a violation of the warranty. On the other hand, these systems may make the car easier to hack and allow the owner more control in adjusting how the car operates.
  12. Goddamn, you people are clever. by RandoX · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  13. Could make a better OBD2 by GreenEnvy22 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  14. I support this product and/or service... by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...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....

    1. Re:I support this product and/or service... by HTTP+Error+403+403.9 · · Score: 3, Funny

      I always wanted to get a Prius and cut the logo apart and stick an "M" in it.

      Toyota Primus!
      Toyota Primus Sucks!
      --
      I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
  15. Re:News of the Day by FictionalAccount · · Score: 4, Funny

    Dr. Sierpinski stepped back from the operating table to admire his handy-work. The stitching was complete, a meticulous and expertly done job. The electrodes were in place, and only administering the life giving elixir remained. Soon his work would be done, soon the world would see!

    "Igor!" he yelled, "Raise the table into position so we may begin the final stage!" His trusty yet somewhat dimwitted hunchback assistant complied, and slowly turned the crank that moved the operating table into a vertical position.

    The creature would stand seven feet tall and was stronger than an ox. His heart and lungs twice that of a normal man's allowing him to carry his massive size as if he were a sprinter. Lifting a cart above his head would be no difficult feat, and his advanced nervous system made him impervious to the jabs and barbs only his future profession could dish out.

    His physical prowess was outmatched only by his mental faculties. Dr. Sierpinski had spent years designing and building the biomechanic wonder (some would call monstrosity) that sat inside the creature's over sized skull. In it he had placed the knowledge and experience of all the worlds greats - Igor had been most helpful at gathering the necessary remains, scouring the globe and riding coach to boot. Burns, Marx, Pryor - almost every comedian who'd ever gotten a laugh was represented in the devilish clockwork of the creatures mind. Here truly would be someone that would show the world. Dr. Abraham "Giggles" Sierpinski would be laughed at no more...yes, truly, his creature...would be laughed _with_!

    The table clicked into place with a final clash. Far above the castle's dungeon laboratory thunder cracked from the approaching storm. "Now Igor, Now! Quickly, throw the switch!" Igor shuffled to the table and pulled the lever. A bright flash erupted as lighting struck the castle's tower and traveled through a series of wires to the creatures base.

    "Yes....Yes...YES! LIVE MY CREATURE! LIVE! LIVE AND MAKE THEM LAUGH!!!!"

    The lighting subsided, and the laboratory was suddenly quiet. The doctor held his breath. Quietly, almost a murmur escaped from the creatures lips.

    "...bsod..."

    "He speaks Igor, he speaks! Quickly! Release the straps! My creature, tell me, what are you trying to say?"

    "...mmmmrrchhc.......bsod....mrrrrrghhh.......mmmm rrrrg....Microsoft.....Mrrrrgh...Microsoft has announced that it is partnering with a Japanese automaker to incorporate Windows Vista Auto Edition with all of their car systems."

    "What?"

    "mrrrgh...mrrrrrrgh....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."

    Igor helpfully chimed in with a boom-tsk from his laboratory drum set.

    "WHAT! What was that? That...that...that wasn't even funny! How...how could this be? My creature, the reanimated flesh of dead humor itself...its not even funny!" He sank to the ground in despair. "How...how could I have been so wrong! Where did I fail? Where did I fail?"

    The creature lifted its massive head, "I for one welcome...mrrrrgh...I for one welcome our failed humor overlord....ggggggahhahghg"

    Dr. Sierpinksi ran from the laboratory, from his monster, clawing his eyes and hair, and wailing into the depths of the night.

    --
    Like what you read? Read more here.
  16. Re:OSEK and AUTOSAR by aldaran · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  17. What about the stereo? by hcdejong · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  18. How about a standard driving UI by Ropati · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
  19. Re:News of the Day by icydog · · Score: 3, Funny

    Fitting, since 90% of BSODs are caused by faulty drivers!

  20. It's not all bad by daBass · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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!