As the price of TFT displays declines and the corresponding computing functions begin to be applied in the embedded world, this makes graphics-based solutions affordable. Because the dashboard is one of the most important HMI components and is placed in front of the driver for viewing at any time, it is a very important differentiating feature for car manufacturers. For high-end cars, this will cause automakers to invest a lot of money in this area. Currently, TFT displays seem to be considered addictive in the field by the driver because it is considered a high-tech feature. This has led to the emergence of advanced mechanical techniques for simulating mechanical instruments. Trying new possibilities is just the beginning, but there is still room for improvement in this area. With reference to products in the consumer goods industry, it is clear that a well-defined user interface is now an important differentiating factor. The general idea of ​​optimizing in this area is to display more complex information in a simpler way - how to achieve this in the automotive field is still being explored and developed. The advantages of doing so are not only in terms of technology but also in business. Branding can be easily added to dashboards using graphics technology. By using a shell for the HMI or supporting the download of additional applications, a new revenue stream may be created.

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Automotive dashboards with graphical displays present new technical challenges for the development of such solutions. The complexity of the dashboard has increased by at least an order of magnitude. Although the graphics technology used in this field itself comes from the PC field, its application in automobiles has just emerged. This requires the development team to have new skills and take a long time to complete the steep learning curve.

PC image quality is already common for consumer electronics, but computing performance in PCs far exceeds the computing power available in the embedded world, which means that rendering realistic images becomes more difficult.

Compared to the PC world, the embedded world also needs to address the challenges of power consumption and temperature—some of which are similar to those encountered in handheld devices. A key feature of automotive solutions is functional safety, while the computer and handheld markets do not. At least some of the information presented on the dashboard of the car is considered to be security-related. Here, presenting the wrong information is an unacceptable behavior.

Applications

In the current market, we see that the graphical dashboard display is clearly divided into several categories. This division is basically driven by the cost of the solution, because the price will increase more after adding a larger display, making the low-end car unbearable. One thing in common with all classifications is the need to use analog pointers – either as electromechanical pointers or as realistic pointers with complex graphics solutions.

1. Intermediate plug display

The plug-in display is one of the most common examples and has now become popular with low-end cars. The dashboard display still uses mechanical needles, but provides an additional display, usually centered between the measurements. The entry level uses a 4-inch QVGA or WQVGA display.

This display is used to present current fuel consumption, temperature or similar information. Information from the infotainment system can also be selectively presented.

Mid- to high-end cars typically use a larger scale display. This allows the display to display camera images such as night view, rear view camera, and even a bird's eye view of the parking assist system.

Since the instrument panel partition of an electromechanical instrument is fixed, it is not suitable for this situation.

2. Two display screens with a central range

A compromise based on traditional electromechanical pointers while providing extended graphics capabilities is to design a display on each side of the central mechanical range. This solution allows for more flexible display of information, but still uses a fixed layout and a fixed electromechanical pointer.

3. Fully configurable dashboard

The fully configurable dashboard uses a large display with 1600 x 480 pixel resolution. These displays are still a large cost factor, so their applications are currently limited to high-end cars. Since no mechanical pointers are used, current implementations are primarily focused on rendering realistic analog pointers. Because the dashboard content is completely software-defined, it has the flexibility to adjust for specific use cases. By zooming in, out, or moving content that is unrelated to the current situation, context-specific information such as night views can be effectively integrated into the dashboard.

4. Head-up display

The head-up display can project image information onto the windshield. The resolution of such displays is usually very low and the image content is very simple. The content of the head-up display must be pre-bent to compensate for the deformation caused by the curved windshield. There are many ways to implement pre-bending, including software, graphics accelerators, or dedicated hardware. The head-up display is typically used in conjunction with a TFT display in the dashboard.

technology

The complexity of the application examples is different. There are several reasons for this.

● Screen size: The various screen sizes cause the generated pixels to vary greatly. For solutions that are currently available or under development on the market, each frame needs to be processed in a range of pixels from 75k pixels to 1.3M pixels.

● Animation frequency: As long as the fast movement is displayed, a higher animation frequency must be provided. An important use case is the range pointer in the speedometer or tachometer.

● Scene complexity: A variety of desired optical effects, including typical graphical user interface menus, and 3D scenes with glow, reflection, and shadow effects rendering.

In order to meet the different levels of complexity described in the previous section, different techniques are needed to generate the image.

Raster graphics

In the raster graphics, the color values ​​of each pixel will be saved. Primitive processing usually refers to processing a rectangular area composed of pixels.

An important feature of raster graphics is that it is affected by resolution. Scaling will result in severe light attenuation.

Raster graphics are a common natural image (photo) technology, and most graphic formats can represent raster graphics (jpg, bmp, png, gif). Many applications support raster graphics, including Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, and Aperture.

1.1 Raster Graphics Processor

To speed up raster graphics, the standard solution is to use a raster graphics processor that can copy/fill/combine rectangular regions of pixels. Raster graphics accelerators typically perform memory-to-memory operations that read metadata from memory and then write the resulting data to memory. There is currently no universally accepted API standard. Some proprietary APIs provide similar functionality. More advanced accelerators provide the ability to draw basic graphics, such as drawing lines and circles.

1.2 Direct Bitmap Transfer Engine (Silver Engine)

Similar to raster graphics processors, the direct bitmap transfer engine also handles rectangles of pixels. The key difference is that the results of the graphics operation are not written back to memory. The direct bitmap transfer engine is part of the display controller that composes each frame read from different locations in memory into the final image. The main advantage of using a direct bitmap transfer engine for embedded systems is that it saves memory and memory bandwidth. In addition, it can generate graphics very efficiently because only the metadata needs to be modified, such as the position of some rectangles, rather than modifying the pixel data itself. The biggest drawback of the direct bitmap transfer engine is the post-merger limit. When the limits of the device's capabilities are exceeded, it will be difficult to generate more complex graphics. If you are using raster graphics, it will only result in an extended presentation time. This solution has a proprietary API with significant differences in engine functionality.

2. Vector graphics

The vector graphics are based on a mathematical description of the shape in 2D space, independent of resolution. Therefore, vector graphics can be rendered at any resolution without quality problems. Vector graphics are a common technique that is common in many applications today. The most prominent example is the TrueType font, but it is also used in the extensible vector graphics format SVG, which is supported by all the latest browsers. Vector graphics such as Adobe Flash are also widely used.

Some applications can generate vector graphics: Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, Adobe Flash Professional. One industry standard API for vector graphics accelerators is OpenVG [0].

3 3D graphics

The current real-time rendering capabilities are based on a 3D model consisting of triangles. To achieve a descent effect, you need to apply a texture effect to the triangle. Splitting a triangle in this way will define a level of detail for the model, which will affect the rendering. This makes the model depend on resolution to some extent.

For the embedded world, there are two related API definitions for 3D graphics. Both APIs come from the standard OpenGL originally launched by Silicon Graphics. For the embedded version, several features that are not related to the embedded device have been removed. This reduces the size of the hardware accelerator and simplifies the required drivers.

Many applications can generate 3D models. The most common applications include Autodesk 3ds Max, Blender, and Autodesk Maya.

Development Process

The development process of the car dashboard is still in an evolving stage. In this development process, different development methods will be adopted according to the underlying graphics technology. This process is divided into several parts.

The art design department first provides sketches of the elements and complete solutions. In most cases, this content will be passed to the software development department, who will develop programming logic to actually implement the solution. Since many details are not well defined, it usually takes a lot of time to modify it repeatedly until the final result meets the requirements of the design department.

For non-3D graphics, one way to reduce the cycle of performing repetitive tasks is to use Adobe® Flash®, a graphical animation tool for defining animation sequences and human interface pixel precision. Further processing of the animation sequence is usually done manually or semi-automatically and requires handwritten code.

One of the major drawbacks of this development process is the lack of flexibility to make changes later in the development process. In addition, a lot of work needs to be done to archive and maintain.

By introducing a graphical standard API, there are currently some solutions on the market that speed up the development process and eliminate the need to hand-write specific code. These products typically utilize primitives designed with the corresponding graphic design application and provide a graphical user interface to design the HMI of the dashboard. No programming skills are required to use this HMI build tool. Just care about the aesthetics and functionality of the generated HMI. The output of the HMI development tool is a software image that runs on top of the embedded target. For convenience, the simulator is typically used to test the HMI directly on the development PC.

Other common additional features include checking the consistency of the generated HMI and generating accurate documentation. By separating the actual representation from the HMI logic, the HMI build tool also eliminates the huge differences between different graphics technologies, which will allow a simplified HMI to be generated on the low-end raster graphics platform and generated using the same HMI description. Excellent 3D HMI.

discuss

The graphics technology used in car dashboards offers many new possibilities. Most of today's solutions focus on the look and feel of mechanical dashboards. From a technical point of view, it is a very difficult task to require realistic images to be generated in real time. Especially for 3D graphics, this will increase the load of the dedicated 3D acceleration module, and even need to borrow a few techniques from the 3D game field to achieve some general optical effects. Considering that the performance of the graphics accelerator will be further improved in the future, rendering realistic images will become more feasible. However, the best results of this rendered mechanical dashboard look similar to the car dashboard that was a decade ago.

In the future, more efforts will be devoted to technology development to take advantage of new features and ultimately improve HMI ergonomics. This is a very broad field that can be actively used as a differentiating factor. The general idea of ​​future development is to present more complex information in a simple way. We have seen this evolution in cars today, for example, by visually indicating the economics of driving style through the number of green leaves on the display. There are many potential improvements in this area.

● Enclosure: Provides a variety of enclosures that allow the user to define the look and feel of the dashboard.

● Use blur effects to focus the driver's attention.

● Use color to attract the driver's attention, such as changing the color of the rendered speed pointer when overspeeding.

● Dynamic partitioning of the display – displays more information about the specific situation based on the degree of flipping of the display.

The consumer electronics market has proven in recent years that HMI is important to its customers and has proven itself to be a new concept that has had a huge impact on the market. While it's not currently possible to predict what the future car's standards are, it's clear that dashboards have the potential to make a truly differentiated advantage. As the main source of information for drivers, it has a huge impact on the overall perception of the car.

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