Android In-Vehicle Infotainment System (AIVI)

Travelling long distances by cars in the modern world has become bearable with the availability of in-vehicle infotainment systems that can entertain and inform both drivers and other occupants. One of the problems faced by application developers for in-vehicle infotainment systems is the lack of an open and standard platform across different car manufacturers. This research investigates the suitability of an Android operating-system to be used as a standard platform for developing an in-vehicle infotainment system. This integrated system will be used as both a source of information and entertainment. Our objective in this thesis is to build an integrated system that provides several infotainment services to the user such as playing music, GPS-based navigation services, road and traffic information and many more services available from third parties. This research thus aims to demonstrate how the Android system can be used as a stepping stone towards establishing an open-standard in the automotive in-vehicle infotainment industry. We believe a system such as ours will help reduce the closed, proprietary and non-extensible systems being released today and bolster the design and development of open, more complete, feature-full systems in vehicles that will not only assist but also entertain drivers and passengers. This research consisted of three main phases. Firstly, the requirements of the system were obtained through a user survey. Secondly, an Android-based system was integrated based on the requirements specification. The integration effort required several software components to be developed and tested. Thirdly, a user opinion survey was conducted based on the features developed in our Android-based In-vehicle Infotainment (AIVI) system