BlackBerry QNX Partners with Obigo to Build a Better Browser for Your Car

John Wall

Senior Vice-President and Head of QNX Software Systems

 

  

Software plays a big role in current vehicles. The best example is your in-vehicle infotainment system. With just a few taps, you can play music from your mobile device, view and manage advanced navigation systems, make phone calls, tap into traffic reports and weather forecasts, all from your car’s center display console. Drivers and passengers love these systems and are dependent on them. However, Infotainment has its own challenges to address. Security aside, the infotainment system needs to be able to provide support for the latest and greatest web browser technology to give the users access to the content they want the instant they want it, whether on the web or off. You do not, after all, want to be fumbling with an unresponsive display when you are on the road.

At BlackBerry, we are constantly seeking ways to improve the vehicle cockpit experience and to enhance our QNX CAR Platform for Infotainment (QNX CAR). This is why we are proud to announce our partnership with Obigo a leading Korea-based provider of mobile Internet services and browser software. Obigo is working with is to deliver a powerful, Chrome Blink-based HTML5 engine, which will enhance the browser experience of your infotainment systems.

As part of the agreement, our internal HTML5 team will be augmented by Obigo’s team of experts who will help to optimize the latest Blink browser technology with QNX CAR (pictured). QNX CAR, our best in class Infotainment system, has more than 50% global market share and is present in over 60 million vehicles. With QNX bringing this new browser to market, vendors and manufacturers can enrich their driving experience through new applications and services, and drive further customer satisfaction.

“Many automotive OEMs and Tier-1s still view open source HTML browsers as lightweight,” explains Obigo CEO David Hwang. “With almost two decades of browser experience on embedded systems, we have been working to change those perceptions with highly optimized technology that address open source browser performance issues. Working with BlackBerry-QNX, we plan to develop a product that will boost interest in HTML5 technology for emerging in-vehicle applications and services.”

Obigo’s technology will also simplify the coding of HTML 5 browsers for new infotainment systems and accelerate the product development cycle. Obigo joins the ecosystem of BlackBerry QNX partners that collectively offer the best-in-class system level solution for our infotainment customers.

From Concept to Reality: BlackBerry-QNX's Groundbreaking CES Tradition

Thomas Bloor
Business Development Manager, QNX BlackBerry

The annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas has been growing in importance for the automotive industry over the years. You can hardly fail to notice that this year, as in previous years, the big automakers vie for floor space and attention with the glut of big screen TVs and other consumer goods. As always, BlacBerry QNX will be in the North Hall, proudly in the middle of the big automotive OEMs. 

At CES BlackBerryQNX has an enviable history of bringing concept cars that rival anything on the show floor, with one important difference – ours are not pure flights of fancy, and we show technologies that will become realities in the near future.

We started this trend back in 2010 with an LTE-connected Toyota Prius – 18 months before the first commercial LTE deployment in mid-2011. Working with Alcatel-Lucent to provide the experimental network, we demonstrated Google maps functionality with local search and an embedded Pandora radio app in a car for the first time. Connectivity is standard in many cars today, but in 2010 we demonstrated the future.

2012 brought us a CNET "Best of CES" award for demonstrating cloud-based natural language voice recognition, text-to-speech, and NFC based one-touch Bluetooth pairing.  Simply touching your phone to an NFC reader in the center console automatically paired the phone and car. 

In 2013 we got ahead of the trend for ever larger center stack displays – with detailed 3D maps and voice recognition Keyword Spotting – common today in smartphones but a first in a car. Simply saying "Hello Bentley" enabled you to start interacting with the natural language cloud based voice recognition Powered by AT&T’s Watson. 

2014 took literally us in a different direction. A 21-inch horizontally orientated center stack display extends across the dash, naturally extending the interaction and functionality towards the passenger.  Behind the screens the instrument cluster was integrated with the center stack running both driver information and IVI functions. With seamless controllability across the touch screen, physical buttons, and the jog wheel controls multi-modal input was highlighted across all available functionality. 

Not content with that, we foreshadowed greater integration of ADAS functionality warnings to the driver. In 2014 we warned the driver if local speed limits were exceeded through both the cluster and verbally through text-to-speech, and we followed this up in 2015 with a system that recommends an appropriate speed for upcoming curves based upon driving conditions and the radius of the bend.

So, what innovations will we be showing in 2017? I’m not allowed to tell you just yet but, in a first (for us), we’ll be showing both future and current production technologies and innovations.

Building on our products ranging from in-car acoustics through our comprehensive QNX-CAR application platform and to next generation driver assistance/autonomous drive we will be demonstrating how technology can enhance the user experience and increase safety for drivers and passengers.

While demonstrating technologies that will come to future production vehicles, these cars are not just "show floor wonders" because our automotive knowledge enables us to build demonstrators for the real world, which can be driven, thus allowing technologies to be experienced first-hand.

QNX's Fabulous Concept Cars

Thomas Bloor

Business Development Manager, BlackBerry

If you’ve been to CES chances are you’ve seen one of our concept cars, even if you’ve not been to our booth, we take these to our industry partners. Now as we start gearing up for next year’s CES there are some great innovations in the pipeline. (I’ve seen them, but I’m not telling.) So as I can’t spill the beans on what's coming, but let’s take a look at some of my favorite QNX Concept Cars from years past.

The Porsche 911 Carrera (CES 2012)

Admittedly I have a soft spot for performance cars, but the Porsche deserves headline billing in the roster as a CNet "Best of CES" winner. With revolutionary (for 2012), cloud-based voice recognition you could control the navigation system using natural language.   And, text-to-speech meant that you could listen to incoming BBMs, emails and text messages. Rounding out the roster of features that would still be considered ahead of the curve for a production car today, this model featured one-touch Bluetooth pairing.  Simply touching your phone to an NFC reader in the center console automatically paired the phone and car. 

The Bentley Continental GT (CES 2013)

In an outburst of Canadian quirkiness, we decided that when better to do a photoshoot of a Bentley Convertible than in the middle of the Canadian winter? Of course despite the -20C (-4F) weather we’d have to have the top down!

The cold and the snow do not detract from the revolutionary center stack with DLP® display from Texas Instruments. This immense (for 2013) featured an organically curved surface and TI’s optical touch input technology, which allowed physical control knobs to be mounted directly on the screen resulting in an ideal balance in physical and touchscreen controls

Taking natural language voice recognition a step further we worked with AT&T’s Watson^SM . Say "Hello Bentley," and the car's voice recognition system immediately starts interacting with you, in a distinctly British accent, old chap.

If that weren’t enough, the cluster displays the back-up camera and user configurable high resolution instrumentation. We also took the mobile office to new heights with smartphone integration with streaming music, email notification, news feeds, and other real-time information. Put the Bentley into park and you could fire up video conferencing with realistic telepresence.  

Separate cameras for the driver and passenger provide independent video streams, while high-definition voice technology from QNX offers expanded bandwidth for greater realism, while stereo telepresence makes the remote caller sound as if they’re sitting right next to you.

Mercedes CLA 45 AMG (CES 2014)

Have you looked inside a Mercedes S class recently? The horizontally orientated center stack display extends across the dash. Coincidentally our 2014 Mercedes concept had a 21-inch-wide center display extending towards the passenger enabling a seamless interaction with the vehicle.

 

Behind the scenes the Cluster was integrated with the center stack running both driver information and IVI functions. With seamless controllability across the touch screen, physical buttons and the jog wheel controls multi-modal input was highlighted across all available functionality. 

Not content with that, we foreshadowed greater integration of ADAS functionality warnings to the driver through both the cluster and verbally through text to speech if the local speed limits were exceeded.

Jeep Wrangler and Toyota Highlander

Now it’s not all high end luxury cars, which is just as well because they never let me drive any of them. Our Jeep Wrangler and Toyota Highlanders serve as our QNX reference vehicles showcasing what the QNX CAR application platform can do, straight out of the box. Additionally, the Toyota features our advances in in-car communication and acoustics platforms enabling an enhanced user experience for drivers and passengers.

These cars are not just  "show floor wonders" because our automotive knowledge enables us to build demonstrators for the real world, which can be driven, and the technology can be experienced first-hand. Concept clusters and displays abound, but real vehicle bus integration means these cars are drivable with real instrumentation and connectivity.

While I can’t reveal what new exciting technologies we are planning for CES 2017 (believe me, you’ll want to come and take a look), I can say that our reference vehicles are currently on tour so keep an eye open for them on the roads near you.

If You Hadn’t Noticed the Autonomous Car is Officially The Next Big Thing

Thomas Bloor

BlackBerry QNX 
Business Development                                                                      

So far this year we have seen a surge in press and media attention on the self-driving autonomous car, so much that we can safely say the Autonomous Car is The Next Big Thing. Predictions have been coming thick and fast from the environmental benefits, as apparently every autonomous car is going to be electric, to the potential loss of millions of jobs as taxis and trucks start driving themselves. 

The hype is at least underscored by an element of truth. Big announcements from the automotive industry this year demonstrate what we’ve known for a while: Automotive technology – and especially autonomous vehicles – are speeding up fast.

Most impressively, Ford announced they are investing $182 Million into Pivotal, a Cloud software company, and has announced a complete revamp of their Dearborn campus. Unless you are the escalator repair guy in Building 5, few will miss the 1950’s engineering building’s soon being replaced with a modern campus and architecture designed to support “Ford’s plan to be an auto and mobility company” with “new facilities to further drive innovation and collaboration.”

Every carmaker is lining up media and demonstrations to show their prowess. In an industry that has traditionally been challenged to attract major software talent, automakers are hiring and opening or expanding Silicon Valley offices in order to attract and retain the software engineers they need to compete in the future.

So it comes as no surprise that General Motors quietly acquired Cruise Automation, a San Francisco based company planning to sell Autonomous driving modules that you can retrofit to your existing car. In true Silicon Valley tradition, the acquisition was followed by the announcement that the founders were suing each other over the apparent $1 Billion that GM is paying.

While the fancy offices and lawsuits sound more like Silicon Valley than Detroit it’s all part of the profound change in the industry and signals that the autonomous car is officially The Next Big Thing. While the established industry is pivoting to embrace the new reality that software, not sheet metal, defines their future, they are facing increased competition from a raft of hi-tech startups competing for technical talent.

QNX is at the heart of change in the automotive industry, while often recognized as the operating system behind the industry’s leading infotainment products, the QNX microkernel real time operating system is being built into the heart of next generation safety-critical autonomous systems.

With the industry’s only ISO26262 safety-certified OS, the QNX codebase is a stable POSIX-compliant microkernel free of the code bloat that affects many competing operating systems. This reaps benefits when it comes to developing safety-certified systems for the autonomous car. With the flexibility to do R&D and rapid prototyping on Linux, and then easily port onto the safety-certified kernel, QNX speeds time-to-market and reduces engineering cost.  This comes from the prototype codebase being reused and refined as opposed to being rebuilt for production use.

As the industry is changing so are we. From our suite of products ranging from the Digital Cockpit to Autonomous cars, QNX offers unique solutions spanning the whole car, and make it Safe, Secure, and Reliable.  

We enable the industry to avoid costly and innovation slowing operating system fragmentation across different systems in the car. With the flexibility and capability to form the basis of in car entertainment, driver information, guidance, and safety critical systems, QNX provides the Car OS that is the foundation of the Next Big Thing.