An Embedded Service Platform for the Vehicle Domain

Onboard services are becoming the cornerstone in vehicle equipment. Since navigation systems opened the way past decade, location based services (LBS), as well as new multimedia features, are more and more demanded by drivers. Vehicle manufacturers are working in attractive and useful solutions to be included in their cars. However, an important drawback of this development arises in the proliferation of devices in the driver compartment and the lack of a shared communication interface with the exterior. The space in a vehicle is limited and a friendly interface between the driver and the onboard services is needed. Due to these reasons, our work has been directed to develop an open service platform for vehicles with several communications capabilities. An embedded computer is used as the on board unit (OBU), and a multiplatform software architecture has been designed and deployed on it to let the implementation of onboard services. The navigation sensors installed in our prototype vehicle are used to implement location based services, and several network devices cover all connectivity requirements. Specifically, cellular networks are used in a peer to peer (P2P) based network architecture valid for communications among vehicles and between the car and the road infrastructure. In addition, several services have been implemented and tested to probe the feasibility of the whole system.