Passenger Information and Entertainment — Multimedia Trends and Architectures

Abstract

Imagine: You enter your vehicle and it welcomes you by saying “Good morning Mr. Willis”. Than it notifies you on all the appointments that you have entered either into your home/office-PC or PDA earlier. The vehicle tells you: “You can’t meet your appointment with Mr. Green taking in account the estimated traveling time. Do you want me to call him?” You just answer “Yes” and the system dials automatically. Via the hands free phone you let the people at the destination know that you will arrive late. Afterwards you start your ride. For sure, guided by the integrated navigation system, considering the latest traffic information.

The destination is far, the ride takes you couple of hours. But this is no problem for you. Since your vehicle is online to the internet, your favorite push-channels are active and keeps you always up to date on the stock market. You can listen to incoming emails, read aloud by the system. And if you get hungry, no problem at all! The system offers you restaurants close to your current location. Not every restaurant, just the ones that compares to your favorites, since it knows your preferences. And if you can not decide which restaurant to select, just push the “detail” button and the system provides you with more detailed information related to the proposed restaurants like menus, available seats, parking slots and more. The integrated internet access makes it possible.

The scenarios above are the VISIon for the future convergence of the communications infrastructure, computers, and the automobile. The article is based on the authors long years experience in R&D and refers to studies made on multimedia systems. The presentation will address the trends in the area of multimedia as well as technical requirements on systems architectures and platforms as a whole. It gives you examples on multimedia applications.