TDC: A runnable Linux IVI image

At the 2013 Tizen Developer Conference (TDC) in San Francisco, Jaguar Land Rover's (JLR) Matt Jones demonstrated the most fully-realized in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) system yet released on the Tizen platform. Part proof-of-concept, part development tool, the "download and go" image (as Jones described it) also integrates components from several of the highest-profile projects in the Linux IVI space (which are independent of one another, but frequently have overlapping areas of concern). That integrated build should help users get a clearer picture of the current state of development; a helpful aide considering the multi-year product development cycle of the typical automobile.

The phone with wheels

Jones started out with a quick overview of the automakers' desire to build a standardized platform for IVI. Carmakers, he said, tend to sell a lot of different cars in a lot of different countries, so even "simple" tasks like networking can be convoluted: different cellular networks, different carriers to make deals with, and different regulations all complicate the process. And in the end, all the consumer really cares about is being able to get things accomplished.

JLR has conducted market research on what exactly it is that car buyers want from their IVI system, and the somewhat surprising answer is that most expect it to work just like a big mobile phone. That is, consumers have come to expect certain application-level features from their smartphones, such as instant access to the music they have paid for, regardless of where they are. So they expect the same thing from the computer in their car's dashboard. But when consumers were asked what new applications they expected from cars a few years down the road, they had a different answer: they had no idea at all.

The lesson JLR took from this research is that the IVI platform needs to offer the ease-of-use of smartphones, but be as flexible as the PC, so that it can adapt to whatever new applications developers come up with in the future. Obviously JLR and other companies have decided that Linux is the best choice on which to build the operating system layer, and in recent years there have been a lot of efforts to develop the other parts of the stack, such as the middleware and application APIs.

Nevertheless, Jones said, it was still pretty difficult for application developers to get started writing code for the Linux-based platform that was coalescing. One could go download a lot of separate pieces, such as the GENIVI Alliance projects or various offerings on GitHub, but those components are generally pretty deep in the stack, and putting them all together is not simple.

GENIVI (where Jones is a vice president) then conducted its own survey of engineers, and they overwhelmingly responded that they wanted a downloadable system image with which to develop and test code. That resonated with the feedback given to the Linux Foundation's Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) workgroup, which found that developers wanted an SDK of some sort, rather than having to build test systems from scratch with Open Build System, as they have had to in the past.

And they're off ....

With the votes from so many quarters pointing toward the same thing, Jones said, it was clearly time to develop a tangible Linux IVI system. The result is AGL Demonstrator, a runnable IVI system available as both a VMWare image and installable on x86 hardware. The AGL Demonstrator is built on top of Tizen 1.0, integrating GENIVI components, and sports a custom HTML5 GUI. Both downloads are provided as binary ISO images; presumably the work as a whole inherits Tizen's licensing (which, as with most Linux distributions, incorporates components under a mixture of different open source licenses).

The target hardware is a Nexcom NDiS 166; a Celeron-based embedded Linux box. Jones said that the "what price would you pay" question seemed to split answers into two distinct camps: the "professional" camp that expected a roughly $1000 box (with a nice display included), and the DIY camp that wanted something under $200, with a more bring-your-own-peripherals expectation. Although he did not go into pricing details, he suggested that the Nexcom system is in the former category; he described a modest set-top box setup as an easy-to-acquire low-end alternative. However, Jones also said that many other contemporary x86 systems should work; the Nexcom was simply the test hardware.

The tests that the AGL Demonstrator were subjected to were real-world engineering problems. Jones said that The Linux Foundation's Rudolf Streif led an effort (purely for experimental purposes) to rip out the heating-and-air-conditioning controls from a test vehicle, and hook them up to software controls in the Demonstrator system. Three people (working off and on) were able to do it in about two and half weeks.

In April, AGL held a user-experience (UX) design contest based on Demonstrator, asking developers to contribute HTML5-based interface designs. The demo UX included in the image is designed to "look cool" and look different from the competition, Jones said, but they wanted to challenge the community to take part as well. At the time of the talk, the winners of the contest had not yet been announced, but Jones did point out one important accomplishment: an entry ported Ford's AppLink (a smartphone connection tool) to the Demonstrator platform, and in less than a week. At the Automotive Linux Summit in Tokyo the week following the Tizen event, Streif announced the winners, Ford's among them.

The road map

Despite its newness, the AGL Demonstrator has been a success, and Jones indicated that the plan is to keep it going. The first order of business is to update it to the more recent Tizen 2.1 release. Following that, the plan is to integrate Wayland support (which is not slated to arrive in Tizen proper until the 3.0 release, sometime in late 2013). Next, Jones said, there are several existing open source components that need to be integrated, including the Navit navigation system, BlueZ and oFono for hands-free telephony, Near-Field Communications (NFC) support, and GStreamer media playback with Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) support.

Those components are primarily application-level pieces of the puzzle, but Jones indicated that there are also car-adaptation pieces still needing work, such as Tizen's Automotive Message Broker, a still-under-development framework to exchange sensor data and automotive component messages (e.g., steering status or which seat belts are engaged). Most of the automotive signals and messages have some usefulness for application developers, but not all of them have standardized APIs yet.

AGL Demonstrator clearly fills a high-priority gap in the Linux IVI story. Not only does it allow independent application developers to write and test code on IVI systems, but it offers would-be contributors the chance to take part in platform development. As Jones's talk illustrated, even though there are multiple groups tackling IVI work at one level of the stack or another (GENIVI, AGL, Tizen, etc.), simply putting the pieces together in one place makes them far more useful. Of course, the gaps in AGL Demonstrator's platform support also illustrate how much work remains to be done—but at least with the Demonstrator as an option, motivated members of the Linux community don't have to wait for someone else to cross the next bug off the list.

[The author wishes to thank the Linux Foundation for travel assistance to Tizen Dev Con.]