The infotainment gets onboard
A modular and scalable in-vehicle infotainment system developed jointly by MTA and Italdesign
News – January 2021
The
infotainment system developed jointly by MTA and Italdesign stands out for its
great modularity and scalability. It is in fact made up of identical control
units communicating with each other, thanks also to the connection via
Ethernet, with the aim of ensuring maximum computational capacity. The number
of control units used for each system depends on the number of displays that
the customer wishes to pilot: we can therefore speak of an adaptable and
customizable system.
Each
control unit uses a latest generation multicore microprocessor by Texas
Instruments, which stands out for its high computational power, and is based on
an open-source Android platform.
One of the
great advantages of this system is its ability to host third party software.
The application
software and user experience integrated into the system are the result of the
work of Italdesign, which has established a real competence center dedicated to
infotainment, the Concept Lab: a multidisciplinary environment in which
analyses and studies focused on the human-machine interface are carried out.
Various software applications for the system have been developed in the center,
for example the one that can recognize the user thanks to a camera, thus
ensuring a personalized driving experience. In the software, Italdesign has
also implemented a version of Alexa Auto, the Amazon service that allows the
presence of functions related to voice commands too.
Italdesign
has created a demo to show to potential customers. The demo hosts three
12.1" full TFT multi-touch displays produced by MTA and used as dashboard,
central and passenger side displays.
The speed
and effectiveness of the project confirm the will of the two companies to
continue the collaboration on other future developments.