Service and User Interface Transfer from Nomadic Devices to Car Infotainment Systems

Many of the emerging software applications for nomadic devices are useful in the car as well. In order to use these applications safely in the car, it is necessary to couple them with the vehicle’s infotainment system and its user interface which is optimized for use by the driver. This paper describes a new approach to exchange services and user interfaces between cars and nomadic devices. Services are exchanged through dynamically generated Web Services. HTML 5 based user interface descriptions are used to access shared vehicle software interfaces as well as the remote application’s logic with the help of additional mechanisms for device communication. Make and model specific design is ensured by Stylesheets that are specific for the car model. Our solution combines in-vehicle infotainment systems with external applications in a safe and secure way. Especially, there is no need for pre-defined service specific interfaces, because all interfaces are exchanged dynamically. The paper starts with a motivation, an overview of related work and outstanding challenges followed by a presentation of our approach for in-vehicle device coupling. The user interface exchange is described in detail in the third paragraph. The paper finishes with an example scenario and a conclusion