While Ray LaHood works hard to cut back on technology inside vehicles distracting drivers, Volkswagen has opened a large Electronics Research Laboratory in San Francisco. With a $20 million annual budget, the Volkswagen lab will work with driver assistance human-machine interaction, multimedia and connected vehicles.
Burkhard Huhnke, the lab’s executive director, said that lab will employ 100 designers, engineers and psychologists.
Working with Google, Oracle and Nvidia Corp., Volkswagen will work on the following projects:
- A car that can navigate itself through a parking structure to find a parking place, and return to the structure’s entrance when using a driver’s smart phone.
- Sensor systems that can “see” objects in three dimensions.
- Driving awareness systems that detect traffic-signal and speed limit changes and can accelerate or decelerate vehicles.
- A car monitor that tracks driving patterns that can be uploaded to a smart phone or computer.
- A navigation aid that uses Google Earth, including using “street view” so that a driver knows what a destination looks like.
- A center console that can wirelessly charge smart phones, similar to power mats.
- Floor mats developed by Audi on which the car’s logo is illuminated.
- By: Omar Rana
Source: Automotive News
