Connected Car News: Sonatus, LG Innotek & Cipia

In connected car news are Sonatus, LG Innotek and Cipia.

Sonatus for SDVs Intros Automator

Sonatus, a leading automotive software company that is accelerating the transition to software-defined vehicles (SDVs),  announced Sonatus Automator, its newest product, which enables vehicle functions to be deployed without the burden of a full software development and validation cycle. Automator is designed to enable use cases spanning prototyping, feature personalization, production testing, post-sales service and maintenance, and downstream value-added services such as fleet management and other vehicle monetization.

A component of the Sonatus Vehicle Platform, Automator follows the successful production deployment of Sonatus Collector, which provides dynamically configurable data collection. Automator extends this capability by activating functions in the vehicle to trigger features or perform tests and diagnostics. It can also take actions outside the vehicle such as invoking APIs, sending notifications, and integrating with services like home automation. Automator’s lightweight policy updates are measured in kilobytes, and can be deployed across individual vehicles or an entire fleet, reducing the frequency of complex OTA updates.

“OEMs, tier-1s, and consumers all benefit from the ability to easily and cost-efficiently extend vehicle functionality, which will be a growing requirement from vehicle software in the coming years,” says Jeff Chou, co-founder and CEO of Sonatus. “Sonatus Automator builds on our proven production experience, adding the ability to augment capabilities in vehicles throughout their lifecycle, enhancing value in countless ways.”

Automator enables innovation by many different sub-groups across OEMs, tier-1s, as well as downstream service providers:

  • Product managers can rapidly prototype new features, including personalized experiences based on customer preferences.
  • Production engineers can deploy vehicle-run self-test capabilities both during production and before sale to ensure strong test coverage and initial quality.
  • Post-sales diagnostics engineers or dealer service technicians can deploy capabilities to detect and respond to faults, helping avoid or minimize recalls.
  • Downstream service providers such as fleet managers can create value-added services without the risk of disrupting safety-critical vehicle functions.

A critical component of automation in vehicles is ensuring capabilities are only exposed to authorized users. Automator incorporates role-based access control to ensure users at different roles—ranging from those in the production process to downstream post-sales agents—are each given appropriate authority. This enables rich testing capabilities during manufacture and pre-sales, while restricting access post-sales to ensure certification and safety are not disrupted.

“Most automakers and their partners have yet to truly unlock the potential of the software-defined vehicle,” said Alex Oyler, director at SBD Automotive, a global automotive technology research and consulting firm. “Ultimately, the automakers who have the prudence to blend the right mix of silicon, software, and development tools now will be able to build and support the most differentiating mobility experiences while optimizing costs throughout the development lifecycle. Bridging data collection with intelligent automation within the vehicle represents a key near-term opportunity to empower different areas of automaker businesses to truly capitalize on the benefits of software-defined vehicles.”

Automator will be launched in production vehicles in 2024, and builds on Sonatus’ achievement in production deployment of prior technologies. This new product empowers the automotive ecosystem by providing a powerful and flexible tool to address a range of needs, while retaining their differentiation and relationship with customers. Sonatus’ proven track record of collaboration with OEMs and tier-1 suppliers can pave the way for Automator to be easily incorporated into existing software infrastructure, or to be built on top of Sonatus Foundation, providing critical fundamental capabilities to enable software-defined vehicles.

LG Innotek Flexes Lighting

LG Innotek announced  that it has developed ‘Nexlide-M,’ a flexible stereoscopic automotive lighting.

Nexlide is LG Innotek’s light automotive lighting component made by attaching multiple light source packages to a thin substrate.

A soft and curling material, resin is applied to ‘Nexlide-M’ newly developed this time. In turn, it can be mounted on automobile lighting devices in various designs including daytime running lights (DRL) and rear combination lamp (RCL, including tail lights, brake lights, and turn signals).

Especially, the advantage of ‘Nexlide-M’ is more clear light with minimized number of parts. Without additional components, line and surface images can be realized with light by only using light sources.

Above all, ‘Nexlide-M’ is four times brighter than the existing products. Since this product can illuminate up to 500 CD(Candela, a unit that shows brightness of a light source), which is a global legal standard for daytime running lights, it can be applied in various bodywork of a vehicle.

  • Brighter and more uniform lighting… Improving design flexibility with thin width

Daytime running lights require bright visibility that can be discerned even in broad daylight. By applying a differentiated technology, LG Innotek enabled lighting to illuminate stably even during daytime.

To spread light evenly, it requires an ‘air gap’ with a certain width, inside the light. An air gap is necessary for the light to spread out evenly. However, since there is a restriction on making slim lighting due to the volume of an air gap, it was an industry’s task to minimize it.

By completely eliminating an air gap with a new method, ‘Nexlide-M’ succeeded in reducing its width to 8mm, which is merely 30% of the existing Nexlide (24mm) products.  Applying a new product enables free designing, which helps improve a level of completion of an automobile lighting design.

Moreover, light spreads more evenly in ‘Nexlide-M.’ Even when configured in various angles and shapes, light is seamlessly emitted without stains.

  • Ramp up market occupation targeting premium vehicles

By putting ‘Nexlide-M’ forward, LG Innotek plans to accelerate in ramping up the global automobile lighting market. While premium-level automobiles require luxurious designs, ‘Nexlide-M’ is a product optimized to realize them.

Recently, demands on new designs and animations are getting higher in the automobile lighting market, especially among premium automobiles. That is because lighting attached to the automobile grill can play a role of communication between pedestrians and automobile or display a driving status of an autonomous vehicle using a specific color.

Since ‘Nexlide-M’ can realize pixel lighting (a lighting design that places small stereoscopic lights repetitively) and RGB (displays colors using three primary colors of light; red, green, and blue), it has outstanding design usability compared to other lightings.

Another advantage is that the light source can be configured to a single, thin and long linear module. A long light with a length of more than 1m, it can be elegantly designed along with curves of an automobile. Various animation effects are also available.

According to Ryu In-soo, LG Innotek’s Motor&Lighting (M&L) Vice President, “‘Nexlide-M’ boasts not only excellent functions of automobile lighting but also artistic design.” He said that LG Innotek will “continuously present products that can provide differentiated customer value in the future.”

3 Automakers Integrate Cipia

Cipia, an AI computer vision in-cabin automotive solutions provider, announced that a leading global OEM has started production on three car models that will integrate Cipia’s Driver Sense driver monitoring system. The three vehicles are being produced for the global market, including the USA.

“The start of production of these models marks another remarkable milestone in our technological journey” said Yehuda Holtzman, CEO of Cipia. “It is another example of our In-Cabin sensing solution’s robustness and maturity. Cipia is committed to making the driving experience safer for drivers, passengers, and all road users.”

Cipia’s Driver Sense DMS is being integrated into these car models; the technology behind Driver Sense software uses computer vision and AI to monitor a driver’s state by tracking head pose, direction of gaze, driver position and actions to determine if the driver is drowsy or distracted, holding a phone while driving and more. Using the data provided by Cipia’s Driver Sense, automakers can provide alerts to the driver in real time or take other advanced safety measures to ensure a safe journey.