Mr.T

At the risk of being overly repetitive, commonly used functions are safer and quicker with a few dedicated hardware buttons-knobs that don't even need looking at to operate.

Software buttons are great, but on-off, volume, and even radio channel presets -- Stuff that gets frequent use, are much better in hardware that doesn't move, change, and can be quickly operated with just a glance or even blind. There's to much tendency toward distraction these days.

A perfect example is a neighbor I know who missed a slight curve, drove into a ditch, and hit a fence while fiddling with the car's fancy radio. Sounds dumb, and we all tend to blame the operator, but user interfaces can be a big contributor to accidents in cars, power plants, aircraft, etc. It's especially true when people transition from 1970's interfaces that could be used practically blind to something like a touch screen that takes more attention -- It's really a step backwards ergonomically sometimes.

Rednroll

Great idea, but I would suggest making that easier. Who needs USB, and SD cards when they could all be downloaded and shared from your smartphone or a cloud directly to the radio? The radio would be connected to the internet.

Dat

This is one of those things that's kinda like The Beatle's, you may not like all their songs, but most people will admit they were talented.
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I don't want all that stuff, but I can see how other people do, and it takes a lot of knowledge to make it work out right

Rednroll, I'm not trying to be negative or anything, hope it doesn't turn out looking like that, I know it's a lot of work and that's where the industry is going with vehicles

Rednroll

I hear ya. Quite aware of this argument. We spend a lot of time analyzing these things to make sure they are in the most ergonomic locations. In actuality it's safer to not even have to press a button huh? That's possible via voice commands and since all the vehicles in the future will be using some type of personal assistant and/or a combination of personal assistants such as Google voice, Siri, Alexa, Cortana, etc, etc....and all these voice assistants are based off of natural speaking algorithms, you no longer have to memorize a specific voice command. In the video I posted, there is a "Bixby" button shown on the face of one of the contextual buttons. That's Samsung's voice assistant but what Bixby does currently that the others don't, is that it controls the vehicle functions. Example: "Roll down my window", "turn on my headlights", "turn on the wipers", "Switch to 4WD Hi" etc, etc. There's many solutions out there to achieve what you outlined without having a dedicated button for safety.....it just provides more functionality and acts as a dedicated button if you want it to. We have even demoed virtual reality dedicated buttons where we could put any specific task button anywhere in the vehicle you want it to be, even directly in front of your nose.

In the video I posted, any of those 3 center dials can be configured to be the volume knob. If you take a glimsp at the video, you may even notice the knob on the far right has a speaker on it, with a dial indicator. That's a volume control knob with a current volume level indicator on the knob. You turn it, and it displays the current volume level indicator on the small display. So it does exactly what you described a rotary analog knob does but actually a lot more. It's up to the OEM to decide what they want it to control. It can be configured to control one thing such as volume control or a multitude of other things such as your HVAC controls and there's nothing saying it has to be limited to 3 dials. The beauty is that each dial can be configured to control one thing or a multitude of things.

Rednroll

Nope didn't take it that way. A lot of folks have a difficult time envisioning it if they haven't yet experienced it and often draw from negative experiences of the past. A lot of work goes into all the things you mentioned to make it all simpler to use. To your earlier point about when you stated most of the customers preferred the basics without the technology in your car sales experience. We have quite a bit of market research data on that. We work with JD Powers and other market research survey providers. There are some that prefer basics, but what the actual data says is that a large majority if given a choice they would prefer to have all those technologies available if they didn't have to pay a premium price tag to go along with it and if it was simple to use. So I'm willing to bet you never were given the opportunity to ask your customers, "How about if I was able to give you the choice of this base grade vehicle or this top of the line, with all the technology bells and whistles at the same price and tell you it's simpler to use?" I'm willing to bet you would have sold a lot more high tech vehicles if you were able to give your customers those options.

Dat

On the service side one big downfall is the expense, once it's out of warranty it can cost 800 to 1600 easy to replace an infotainment display/ control for something as simple as a clock not being able to be set, we hadpeople didn't mind paying for it to start with, but didn't like the price of repair parts

akguy09

An option for FLIR that can aid in driving in bad weather, IE whiteout snow storms, heavy ran or dust would be great. It could even improve night driving.

My background is in Combat from the Army an this technology is crucial to survival, I now work in a place where no matter the weather I have to go to work.

Dirt Hammer

I like that as well but a lot of people have tons of gpx files on SD cards or external drives, plug it and download.

icrashbikes

Ok I dig the physical/digital buttons. Having a handful of those to set to your favorite functions and be able to change them easily is an awesome concept. And you're getting into terrain/topo mapping which also sounds awesome. Some guys will argue it takes the fun out of it but when I take my DD Jeep out, I'd rather be on the safer side of not rolling. And I had never thought of headset free comms, in a naked jeep I wonder, with mics and speakers in the right places, if you could use active noise cancelling to quiet the ambient noise and allow for easier conversation. I'm assuming in the hypothetical Navigator that you're using the speakers to amplify voices from front to rear? While we're at it, let's look into a laser system to vaporize rain droplets while the roof is off.

Actually with the lidar systems, couldn't you theoretically create a pretty detailed map of the terrain directly in front of you and use that to make a spotting system inside the vehicle? If the map of the trail is good enough and the dimensions and locations of the wheels and snag points are accurate enough, you can plan the wheel path, axle angles, interferences, etc. It'd be like a digital spotter that plots your line on the screen in the dash. Any sensors under the Jeep would have to be heavily armored and waterproofed. Also I don't know how well that stuff functions when caked with mud or snow, same issue with those and the camera systems. Anything exposed below the paint line someone will find a way to use as a rock slider. This is cool stuff!

Rednroll

This is a good point and one we've been in discussions with our automotive customers with on defining a solution. It is more and more common today that vehicles are on the road for at least 10-15 years. You're driving a 15 year old vehicle with a radio in it that is outdated. We're discussing with them some hardware and software upgrades to add modern features. However, we need the OEMs to work with us on defining a standard form factor or template. Kind of like if you purchased a new computer or upgraded your existing computer . You may not need to replace all your displays, mouse, and all your other peripherals but if you could just purchase and plug in an upgraded processor and memory, and it didn't cost an arm and a leg to do so, then that would ease the pain of installation and upgrade costs. Then once the hardware upgrade is present, additional software functionality and feature can be added re-using 70-90% of your already existing system. Like your smartphone, newer vehicle radios will have OTA (over-the-Air) software upgrade-ability.