QNX acoustics technology shortlisted for 2015 embedded AWARD

Okay, first things first. I didn't get the capitalization wrong. The name of the award really is spelled that way. I thought it odd at first, but I'm getting used to it. And besides, who am I to complain? After all, I spend a good part of my life promoting a product whose name is spelled all uppercase, and... where was I? Oh yes, the award!

Every year, the folks who organize the embedded world Exhibition&Conference hold the embedded AWARDs, which honor the most innovative software, hardware, and tools for embedded developers. And this year, the competition judges selected QNX Acoustics for Active Noise Control as a finalist in the software category.

If you aren’t familiar with our ANC solution, allow me to provide an overview — which will also help explain why the embedded AWARD judges are so impressed.

Automakers need to reduce fuel consumption. And to do that, they employ techniques such as variable engine displacement and operating the engine at lower RPM. These techniques may save gas, but they also result in "boom" noise that permeates the car's interior and can lead to driver distraction. And who needs more distraction?

QNX Acoustics for Active Noise Control can integrate 

seamlessly into a vehicle's infotainment system.

To reduce this noise, automakers use ANC, which plays “anti-noise” (sound proportional but inverted to the offending engine tones) over the car's speakers. The problem is, existing ANC systems require dedicated hardware, which adds design complexity, not to mention significant Bill of Materials costs. And who needs more costs?

Enter QNX Acoustics for ANC. Rather than use dedicated hardware, QNX ANC provides a software library that can run on the existing DSP or CPU of the car's head unit or audio system. This approach not only reduces hardware costs, also enables better performance, faster development, and more design flexibility. I could go on, but I will let my colleague Tina Jeffrey provide the full skinny.

Did I mention? This wouldn’t be the first time QNX Software Systems is tapped for an embedded AWARD. It has won two so far, in 2006 and 2004, for innovations in multi-core and power-management technology. It was also a finalist in 2010, for its persistent publish/subscribe messaging. Here's to making it a hat trick.

Bad idea, good idea

Why equip cars with external-sounding speakers? I thought you'd never ask. As it turns out, it can be a really bad idea. Or a really good one.

Here, for example, is a case where bad arguably prevails:


Source: Modern Mechanix blog

No doubt, the person who devised this system in 1931 thought it a brilliant, or at least entertaining, idea. Fortunately, common sense prevailed and the era of the "auto speaker," with its potential to scare the living daylights out of pedestrians, never came to pass.

But here's the thing: equipping cars with external-sounding speakers can be a great idea, when done for the right reasons. For example, some hybrid and electric vehicles are dangerously quiet for bicyclists and visually impaired pedestrians. Adding speakers to emit audible alerts or to project synthesized engine sounds can be just what the doctor ordered. Or rather, what the parliament ordered: earlier this month, members of the European Parliament stated that they want automakers to install acoustic alerting systems in hybrid vehicles by July 2019.

Mind you, safety isn't the only reason to project synthesized engine sounds. For example, fuel-saving techniques can make even powerful engines sound wimpy — a problem when high performance is a key ingredient of a car's branding. In that case, the automaker may wish to project synthesized engine sounds over both external and internal speakers. The speakers can help preserve the car's wow factor (provided they're not too loud) and the internal speakers, in particular, can make it easier for car owners who drive manual to shift gears by ear. The QNX concept car for acoustics offers a good example of this technology in action.

All of which to say, engine sound enhancement, also known as ESE, is here to stay. And it's not a bad time to be in the automotive-speaker business, either.

The 10 qualities of highly effective hands-free systems

The first time I saw — and heard — a hands-free kit in action was in 1988. (Or was it 1989? Meh, same difference.) At the time, I was pretty impressed with the sound quality. Heck, I was impressed that hands-free conversations were even possible. You have to remember that mobile phones were still an expensive novelty — about $4000 in today’s US dollars. And good grief, they looked like this:



It’s almost a shock to see how far we’ve come since 1988. We’ve become conditioned to devices that cost far less, do far more, and fit into much smaller pockets. (Though, admittedly, the size trend for smartphones has shifted into reverse.) Likewise, we’ve become conditioned to hands-free systems whose sound quality would put that 1998 kit to shame. The sound might have been okay at the time, but because of the contrast effect, it wouldn’t pass muster today. Our ears have become too discerning.

Which brings me to a new white paper from Phil Hetherington and Andrew Mohan of the acoustics team at QNX Software Systems. Evaluating hands-free solutions from various suppliers can be a complex endeavor, for the simple fact that hands-free systems have become so sophisticated and complex. To help simplify the decision process, Phil and Andrew have boiled the problem down to 10 key factors:

• Acoustic echo cancellation
  
• Noise reduction and speech reconstruction
  
• Multi-channel support
  
• Automatic gain control
  
• Equalization
  
• Wind buffet suppression
  
• Intelligibility enhancement
  
• Noise dependent receive gain
  
• Bandwidth extension
  
• Wideband support

Ultimately, you must judge a hands-free solution by the quality of the useful sound it delivers. By focusing on these 10 essentials, you can make a much sounder judgment (pun fully intended).

Recently, Electronic Design published a version of this paper on their website. For a longer version, which includes a decision checklist, visit the QNX download center.

QNX drives home (quietly) with embedded award

Every year, the organizers of the Embedded World conference hold the embedded AWARDs to recognize the most innovative software, hardware, and tools for embedded developers. And this year, they selected QNX Acoustics for Active Noise Control, the new QNX solution for eliminating engine "boom" noise in cars, as the winner in the software category.

This marks the third time that QNX Software Systems has taken home an embedded AWARD. The company also won in 2004 for power management technology and in 2006 for its multicore tools and OS — and in 2010, it nabbed a finalist spot for its persistent publish/subscribe messaging. That's a lot of plaques.

QNX Acoustics for ANC eliminates the need
for costly dedicated ANC hardware.

So why did QNX Acoustics for ANC get the blue ribbon treatment? I can't speak on behalf of the Embedded World judges, but check out this overview I wrote a few months ago. Or better yet, read this deeper dive from my colleague Tina Jeffrey.

Or skip the middle man entirely and check out the product page, which does a nice job of summarizing what QNX Acoustics for ANC is all about.

QNX Acoustics for Voice — a new name and a new benchmark in acoustic processing

Tina Jeffrey

Earlier this month, QNX Software Systems officially released QNX Acoustics for Voice 3.0 — the company’s latest generation of acoustic processing software for automotive hands-free voice communications. The solution sets a new benchmark in hands-free quality and supports the rigorous requirements of smartphone connectivity specifications.

Designed as a complete software solution, the product includes both the QNX Acoustics for Voice signal-processing library and the QWALive tool for tuning and configuration.

The signal-processing library manages the flow of audio during a hands-free voice call. It defines two paths: the send path, which handles audio flowing from the microphones to the far end of the call, and the receive path, which handles audio flowing from the far end to the loudspeakers in the car:





QWALive, used throughout development and pre-production phases, gives developers realtime control over all library parameters to accelerate tuning and diagnosis of audio issues:



A look under the hood
QNX Acoustics for Voice 3.0 builds on QNX Software Systems’ best-in-class acoustic echo cancellation and noise reduction algorithms, road-proven in tens of millions of cars, and offers breakthrough advancements over existing solutions.

Let me run through some of the innovative features that are already making waves (sorry, couldn’t resist) among automotive developers.

Perhaps the most significant innovation is our high efficiency technology. Why? Well, simply put, it saves up to 30% both in CPU load and in memory requirements for wideband (16 kHz sample rate for HD Voice) and Wideband Plus (24 kHz sample rate). This translates into the ability to do more processing on existing hardware, and with less memory. For instance, automakers can enable new smartphone connectivity capabilities on current hardware, without compromising performance:



Another feature that premieres with this release is intelligent voice optimization technology, designed to accelerate and increase the robustness of send-path tuning. This technology implements an automated frequency response correction model that dynamically adjusts the frequency response of the send path to compensate for variations in the acoustic path and vehicle cabin conditions.

Dynamic noise shaping, which is exclusive to QNX Acoustics for Voice, also debuts in this release. It enhances speech quality in the send path by reducing broadband noise from fans, defrost vents, and HVAC systems — a welcome feature, as broadband noise can be particularly difficult for hands-free systems to contend with.

Flexibility and portability — check and check
Like its predecessor (QNX Aviage Acoustic Processing 2.0), QNX Acoustics for Voice 3.0 continues to offer maximum flexibility to automakers. The modular software library comes with a comprehensive API, easing integration efforts into infotainment, telematics, and audio amplifier modules. Developers can choose from fixed- and floating-point versions that can be ported to a variety of operating systems and deployed on a wide range of processors or DSPs.

We’re excited about this release as it’s the most sophisticated acoustic voice processing solution available to date, and it allows automakers to build and hone systems for a variety of speech requirements, across all their vehicle platforms.

Check out the QNX Acoustics for Voice product page to learn more.

Just add jelly

I like toast. I also like peanut butter. But you know what I really like? The two of them together. Not only does the combination taste great, but making it is easy: all I need is a knife, a toaster, and a plate. Heck, sometimes, I even skip the plate!

Why am I mentioning this? Well, when designing an embedded system, you often need to source third-party hardware or software components. And when doing so, you should always make sure they follow the toast-and-peanut-butter rule: work together out of the box, with little or no fuss. That way, you can focus on adding your own special jelly and transform your peanut-butter toast into a one-of-a-kind PB&J that customers can't get enough of. (Man, I should never write when I'm hungry!)

Evan-Amos, Wikimedia Commons

Seriously, there is no better way to jump-start an embedded project than to choose components that already work in concert. Which is the idea behind today's announcement between Cadence and QNX Software Systems. In a nutshell, they have announced that QNX Acoustics for Active Noise Control (ANC) has been ported to the Cadence Tensilica HiFi Audio/Voice DSP core.

If you're unfamiliar with QNX Acoustics for ANC, it's a software solution for reducing unwanted engine "boom" inside passenger vehicles. Compact and efficient, it can run on a processor or DSP core in the vehicle's infotainment system or audio amplifier, eliminating the dedicated hardware of conventional ANC solutions.

According to Peter McCarthy of QNX, “modern fuel-saving techniques, such as deactivating cylinders when engine load is light, can cause irritating boom noise that distracts the driver. QNX Acoustics for ANC generates targeted anti-noise over the car’s audio system to cancel out this boom for a more enjoyable ride. By combining QNX Acoustics for ANC with the widely deployed Cadence Tensilica HiFi Audio/Voice DSP core, system designers can reduce engine noise while also eliminating the costs associated with designing and prototyping a custom hardware controller module.”

For more information, read the press release and check out previous posts on QNX Acoustics for ANC.

AUTOMOBILE In-car displays you hear, rather than see

We still have a lot in common with our caveman ancestors. (Yes, I know, they didn't all live in caves. Some lived in forests, others in savannahs, and still others in jungles. But I'm trying to make a point, so bear with me!)

Take, for example, our sense of hearing. At one time, we used auditory cues to locate prey or, conversely, avoid becoming prey. If a cave bear growled, getting a fix on the location of the growl could mean the difference between life and death. At the very least, it helped you avoid running directly into the bear's mouth.

Kidding aside, the human auditory system has a serious ability to fix the location, direction, and trajectory of objects, be they cave bears or Buicks. And it's an ability that's been honed from time immemorial. So why not take advantage of it when creating user interfaces for cars?

Which brings us to spatial auditory displays. In a nutshell, these displays allow you to perceive sound as coming from various locations in a three-dimensional space. Deployed in a car, they can help you intuitively identify voices and sources of instructions, and help pinpoint the location and relative trajectory of danger. They can also improve reaction times to application prompts and potentially hazardous events.

Interested in this topic? Learn more in Scott Pennock's ECD article, "Spatial auditory displays: Reducing cognitive load and improving driver reaction times."

I know, that's a lot to take in. So let's look at an example.

Locating the emergency vehicle, without really trying
Have you ever been cruising along when, suddenly, you hear an ambulance siren? I don't know about you, but I often spend time figuring out where, exactly, the ambulance is coming from. And I don't always get it right. That's called a location error.

Such errors can occur for a variety of reasons. For example, if the ambulance is approaching from the right, but your left window is open and a building on the left is reflecting sound from the siren, you might make the mistake of thinking that the ambulance is approaching from the left. Your mind realizes, quite correctly, that the sound is coming from the left, but the environment is conspiring to mask where the sound is actually coming from.

A spatial auditory display can help address this problem by controlling the acoustic cues you hear. The degree to which the display can do this depends, in part, on the hardware employed. For example, a display based on a large array of loudspeakers can provide more location information than one based on two loudspeakers.

In any case (and this is important), the display can help you determine the location more quickly and with less cognitive load — which means you may have more brain cycles to respond to the situation appropriately.


Helping the driver locate and track an emergency vehicle

A slight right, not a sharp rightI'm only scratching the surface here. Spatial auditory displays can, in fact, help improve all kinds of driving activities, from engaging in a handsfree call to using your navigation system.

For example, rather than simply say "turn right", the display could emit the instruction from the right side of the vehicle. It could even use apparent motion of the auditory prompt to convey a slight right as opposed to a sharp right.

But enough from me. To learn more about spatial auditory displays, check out a new article from my colleague Scott Pennock, whose knowledge of spatial auditory displays far surpasses mine. The article is called Spatial auditory displays: Reducing cognitive load and improving driver reaction times, and it has just been published by Embedded Computing Design magazine.

AUTOMOBILE Find me a Starbucks! QNX concept car showcases power of WATSON speech engine

Yes, you can talk to the QNX concept car and tell it what to do.

Recently, our friends at AT&T invited us to bring the concept car to their "Living the Networked Life" event in New York. We said yes, of course! After all, what could be cooler than riding the streets of Gotham City in a digitally pimped-out Porsche 911?

Kidding aside, the event provided an excellent opportunity to demonstrate how the car takes advantage of WATSON, AT&T's natural-language speech engine. To get an idea of what WATSON can do, check out this video from Terrence O'Brien of Engadget:



For the full Engadget article, click here. And stay tuned for more updates from the Living the Networked Life event.

QNX Acoustics for Active Noise Control wins a Silver Stevie

Lynn Gayowski

The winners of the 11th annual International Business Awards have been announced and I'm happy to share that QNX Acoustics for Active Noise Control (ANC) has won a Silver Stevie Award in the software category, for Best New Product or Service of the Year! The awards program honours the achievements of organizations and working professionals worldwide, and received more than 3,500 nominations this year from dozens of countries. It feels great to be chosen as a winner among so many entries.
If you're unfamiliar with QNX Acoustics for ANC, it's a software solution that can dramatically reduce unwanted engine harmonic noise inside the cabin of a vehicle. The software's algorithms for noise cancellation can run on an existing CPU or DSP in the infotainment system, eliminating the need for dedicated hardware controller modules. The end result is significant savings for automakers and a quieter ride for drivers and passengers.
This is the second award for QNX Acoustics for ANC, after a win in February at the Embedded World conference's embedded AWARDs. If you want to learn more about the solution, read our white paper titled A Software-Based Approach to Active Noise Control in Automobiles. Congratulations QNX!

New release of QNX acoustic processing suite means less noise, less tuning for hands-free systems

Paul Leroux

This just in: QNX has released version 2.0 of its acoustic processing suite, a modular software library designed to maximize the quality and clarity of automotive hands-free systems.

The suite, used by 18 automakers on over 100 vehicle platforms, provides modules for both the receive side and the send side of hands-free calls. The modules include acoustic echo cancellation, noise reduction, wind blocking, dynamic parametric equalization, bandwidth extension, high frequency encoding, and many others. Together, they enable high-quality voice communication, even in a noisy automotive interior.

Highlights of version 2.0 include:

Enhanced noise reduction — Minimizes audio distortions and significantly improves call clarity. Can also reconstruct speech masked by low-frequency road and engine noise.

Automatic delay calculation and compensation — Eliminates almost all product tuning, enabling automakers to save significant deployment time and expense.

Off-Axis noise rejection — Rejects sound not directly in front of a microphone or speaker, allowing dual-microphone solutions to hone in on the person speaking for greater intelligibility.

To read the press release, click here. To learn more about the acoustic processing suite, visit the QNX website.


The QNX Aviage Acoustic Processing Suite can run on the general purpose processor,
saving the cost of a DSP.

 

AUTOMOBILE Making of the QNX concept car... honest

We created this video as a backdrop for CES 2015 where we unveiled the latest QNX concept car (a Porsche 911). Good thing, too, as people clearly stated that they would not have believed we did this cool retrofit ourselves without proof.

Wanted: Haunted Vehicles

Halloween is just around the corner, and that reminds me of the haunted room at Lucent Bell Labs. Mind you, it wasn’t really haunted. But for a moment, I was convinced.

Let me explain. As I entered the room, I could hear two of my colleagues talking to each other, and by the sound of their voices, they were both sitting right in front of me. But when I looked, I could see only one person. Creepy, to say the least.

It took a few seconds, but I finally realized what was happening: The other colleague was in a different room, talking over a perfectly tuned prototype of a conference phone. The sense of presence was so real that I couldn’t help but feel we were all in the same room — even after I became aware of the “trick” being played!

It was then that I realized it: We don’t know what we’re missing until we experience it.

Making it real
Current telephone calls don’t sound like face-to-face conversations because the telephone network and terminals band-limit speech from about 50-10000 Hz down to 300-3400 Hz. To make matters worse, the phone’s single channel of audio eliminates spatial information about the sound source. As a result, we perceive most sounds as coming from the same point in space.

But here's the thing: The historical reasons for transmitting these single-channel narrowband speech signals no longer apply. Current technologies — such as wideband speech coders, spatial audio, and VoIP — are enabling speech communications with wider bandwidth speech and greater spatial information.

Many in the industry refer to these next-generation telecommunications systems as telepresence systems. “Telepresence” refers to the degree of realism created by a telecommunications system. Traditional systems have low telepresence while newer systems that use wider bandwidth speech and spatial audio have high telepresence.

Some people believe that a visual display is a must-have for a telepresence system. In reality, a display can decrease telepresence if its quality is poor. Experience shows that an audio-only system can have such high telepresence that people can't distinguish it from face-to-face communications — witness my haunting experience at Lucent Bell Labs.

Until recently, widespread deployment of telepresence systems has hit a roadblock: lack of standardization. Fortunately, the IETF CLUE Working Group and ITU-T Study Groups 16 and 12 are actively developing standards to remedy this situation.

Pimp my ride with telepresence
Telepresence systems have a lot to offer in an automotive environment. For instance, they could:

• reduce driver distraction
• make it easier to understand speech in the presence of vehicle noise
• reduce the fatigue that comes from trying to understand a degraded voice signal

Moreover, a telepresence system makes the talker on the far end of the phone connection sound more like they are in the vehicle; it also makes the talker easier to identify.

Successful deployment of telepresence in an automotive environment depends on several factors:

• attention to the design of vehicle platforms
• use of high-performance acoustic processing algorithms (AEC, NR, etc.), such as those provided by the QNX acoustic processing suite
• the ability to transport telepresence signals between telephony terminals — this is being enabled by increased VoIP availability (via LTE, for instance)

I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to the day when my vehicle is haunted like that lab in New Jersey!

For additional reading on this topic, download the whitepaper, "Wideband Speech Communications for Automotive: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly".

 

Attending SAE Convergence? Here’s why you should visit booth 513

Cars and beer don’t mix. But discussing cars while having a beer? Now you’re talking. If you’re attending SAE Convergence next week, you owe it to yourself to register for our “Spirits And Eats” event at 7:00 pm Tuesday. It’s the perfect occasion to kick back and enjoy the company of people who, like yourself, are passionate about cars and car electronics. And it isn’t a bad networking opportunity either — you’ll meet folks from a variety of automakers, Tier 1s, and technology suppliers in a relaxed, convivial atmosphere.

But you know what? It isn’t just about the beer. Or the company. It’s also about the Benz. Our digitally modded Mercedes-Benz CLA45 AMG, to be exact. It’s the latest QNX technology concept car, and it’s the perfect vehicle (pun fully intended) for demonstrating how QNX technology can enable next-generation infotainment systems. Highlights include:

• A multi-modal user experience that blends touch, voice, and physical controls
• A secure application environment for Android, HTML5, and OpenGL ES
• Smartphone connectivity options for projecting smartphone apps onto the head unit
• A dynamically reconfigurable digital instrument cluster that displays turn-by-turn directions, notifications of incoming phone calls, and video from front and rear cameras
• Multimedia framework for playback of content from USB sticks, DLNA devices, etc.
• Full-band stereo calling — think phone calls with CD quality audio
• Engine sound enhancement that synchronizes synthesized engine sounds with engine RPM

Here, for example, is the digital cluster:



And here is a closeup of the head unit:



And here’s a shot of the cluster and head unit together:



As for the engine sound enhancement and high-quality hands-free audio, I can’t reproduce these here — you’ll have come see the car and experience them first hand. (Yup, that's an invite.)

If you like what you see, and are interested in what you can hear, visit us at booth #513. And if you'd like to schedule a demo or reserve some time with a QNX representative in advance, we can accommodate that, too. Just send us an email.

AUTOMOBILE Am I crazy for talking to my car?

Earlier this afternoon, I participated in a connected car panel at SpeechTEK 2015, hosted by our friend Mazin Gilbert from AT&T. The other panelists included Greg Bielby of VoltDelta, Thomas Schalk of Agero, and Hakan Kostepen of Panasonic.

Even though Mazin did a fantastic job, not every panelist had a chance to answer every question. I was itching to answer some, so here are my responses to the questions that I didn't get to answer, or where I feel I could have provided a more complete response.

Have speech technologies matured to the point where they can be used robustly in the car? The general answer to this question from the panel was yes, but I think the real answer is a qualified yes. The technologies exist, but often aren't applied or may need auto-specific adaptations to handle in-cabin noise or other issues. Natural language recognition was an oft-stated driving technology, but a missing piece to the puzzle is hybrid recognition. I don't mean pushing recognition wholesale to the cloud, like Siri does. I mean a true split of the recognition effort, where each part does what it’s best at. Put the front half of acoustic processing in the vehicle to clean up the audio and convert the waveform to frequency-domain data, then send the data to the cloud-based server. The cloud server can then parse and interpret the data, and send back the result.

Hybrid speech rec solves three problems at once: better audio signals (the car can improve audio specific to the in-cabin environment), better cost (frequency data is far more compressed than raw audio, so you pay less for data transfer), and better responsiveness (hybrid rec gives the server time to start working on the response while it's coming in instead of waiting for the whole utterance to finish before starting).

Is driver distraction a major business driver, or is it the "Siri effect"? Currently, the car industry seems to use driver distraction as a reason to push a lot of features into speech. Many of those uses are gimmicky. Personally, I don't care if I can set my climate control system with voice — why would I when I can simply turn a dial? I once had someone ask me about the feasibility of adding voice recognition commands for rolling down the windows. I asked him, "Yes, but wouldn't people just push the window button?"

We shouldn’t implement speech commands just because we can. They may have contributed to excitement in the early adopter crowd, but we're beyond that now. Mind you, there are some seriously useful ways to use voice. For instance, any time you need to pick from a huge number of choices, voice recognition is the natural way to go. Calling contacts ("Call Sarah Potter"), entering destinations ("Go to 3121 South Park Street"), or picking music ("Play Audioslave") are all much easier than using an HMI to enter the same information, and safer to boot. It just has to work consistently and accurately.

Will car makers see more speech moving to the cloud, or will it be a hybrid of cloud and embedded? I disagree with the majority of the panel on this one, and, I think, the majority of people in the industry. Most auto people believe a hybrid between embedded and cloud allows the best of both worlds — good recognition and updatability when connected, and consistent reliability when not. My colleague Andrew Poliak also champions this view with a memorable catch phrase: Zombie Apocalypse. That is, you still want the system to work, albeit partially, when the infrastructure isn't available.

But if you ask me, everyone is missing the point — theirs is a technology-centric point of view. Everyday customer acceptance of a particular technology is notoriously harsh: if it doesn't work well, it gets rejected out of hand. Good cloud solutions beat an embedded solution hands-down; they just need some improvements (see my hybrid bullet above). Once a customer experiences a good solution, they will become frustrated with one that performs poorly. In my opinion, it's better not to offer the service at all, than to try a graceful degradation of capability, because most customers won't understand or care. Spend the effort instead on making sure you always have an acceptable cloud connection — either through multiple redundant mechanisms or a car-based powerful antenna — and you'll be better off. Even when the car knows some data that the cloud doesn't (like a mobile's contact list or music selection), there's no need to handle that on the embedded side. The cloud recognition server is powerful enough to not require the data set a priori. And I think we can predict an eventual migration of phone data to cloud-based data (or cloud-synchronized data) that makes the car's knowledge either easily transferrable or less relevant.

Who makes money, and how, from voice-enabled agents or voice services? This was one of the best questions of the panel, because nobody really knows the exact model, but everybody agreed that customer tolerance is very low. The most likely candidate is ad-based revenue. This doesn't mean reading ads aloud to the driver, but rather, positively influencing search results for either active or temporary situation-based points of interest (POIs). Depending on how valuable the service is to the driver, there will still be an option for service-based payments and high-value apps.

Standards and building mobile apps — will it come? You need standards if you want to build an app platform that will promote application creation and adoption. That's what we're doing with the QNX CAR 2 application platform — creating a way for someone other than the car companies to join the ecosystem and to deploy their apps to the car in a controlled way. But don't forget, you need a standard way to deploy apps for the cloud half of the recognition, too.

To close, let me share two photos. One was taken outside the Marriott Marquis, the hotel hosting the conference just off of Times Square in NYC. The other is from our PR agency, Breakaway Communications. What do they have in common? Wooden water towers. Sorry, I couldn't help myself; I just love those things. They just look so quaint in a city full of glass and brick.

WIRED Autopia slips into driver's seat of QNX reference vehicle

Chances are, you've seen pictures of the new QNX reference vehicle. You may have even seen the "making of" video that QNX released a few days ago. But have you seen any video of the vehicle in action?

If not, check out this vid by Doug Newcomb of WIRED Autopia. Last week, at Telematics Detroit, Doug met up with Andrew Poliak of QNX for a tour of the vehicle and its various features, including a re-skinnable UI and voice-controlled Facebook integration. The camera was rolling, and here's what it caught:

Using a smaller BOM to make less boom

Don't know about you, but where I live, the price of gas has rocketed through the troposphere and is fast approaching the upper stratosphere. Which is to say, it has gone through the proverbial roof. It was almost $1.40 a liter (over $5 a gallon) the last time I stopped at a pump and is set to climb even higher, now that summer is approaching.

Small wonder that, for many car buyers, fuel economy is top of mind. Automakers are wise to this and have adopted a variety of measures to make their cars sip gas more slowly. For instance, many cars now deactivate cylinders when engine load is light and use fewer sound-damping materials to shed weight — because schlepping fewer pounds means less work, and less work means less gas.

These techniques save gas all right, but at a price: increased engine “boom” noise that can both annoy and fatigue the driver — not to mention everyone else in the vehicle. That's a problem. To address it, automakers use active noise control, or ANC, which plays noise-cancelling signals over speakers in the vehicle cabin. All fine and good, but until now, ANC solutions have used dedicated hardware, which can drive up Bill of Materials (BOM) costs and make it difficult to leverage the latest ANC technologies.

What to do? That's the subject of a recent whitepaper by my inestimable colleague Tina Jeffrey. Tina outlines some design considerations for ANC systems (choosing the right microphones makes a difference, for example) but mostly, she focuses on the advantages of running ANC logic on the processor or DSP of the car's infotainment system — as opposed to on a dedicated ANC module.

The benefits are many, including lower BOM costs, greater design flexibility, better cooperation between various acoustic functions in the car and — here's the one I like — less boom. But why sit there listening to me drone on about this? Download Tina's paper now and get the real deal.




Software-based ANC: a smaller BOM, with less boom.

The summer road trip of 2017 – Part II

Lynn Gayowski

Our series looking at how in-car technologies will transform your summer road trip continues with part II. 2017 is around the corner, and between now and then, automakers will introduce a bevy of new features that will make for a safer and more enjoyable summer road trip. In our first part, we looked at your road trip soundtrack, navigation, and mobile device connectivity. This week, we look at safety, acoustics, and autonomous cars as we cruise to the last exit for this blog series.

Staying safe
By 2017, we likely won’t have developed the technology to shrink your mechanic down to a size that allows you to perch one on your dashboard like a bobble-head, but many cars will have a “virtual mechanic.” This application will let you check lights, fluids, tire pressure and other system vitals, all through your center stack, digital instrument cluster, or phone – as seen below. The idea of a safety speedometer is hardly new in concept (see the Plymouth safety speedometer from 1939), but its modern implementation in the cars of 2017 in the form of vision systems performing road sign detection might just mean fewer speeding tickets on your road trip, especially as you cruise through unfamiliar areas. 

Staying in touch
Sometimes you want to take a road trip to get away from the world, but sometimes you still want (or need) to stay connected. Whether it’s phone calls, texts, or emails, all of this information will continue to be seamlessly integrated into your car in 2017. Less fumbling, fewer distractions.

And low-quality, stilted speakerphone calls will be a thing of the past with the emerging crop of acoustic technologies. Driving alone on a stretch of road and miss having your loved ones close by? Advanced duplex technology will make it seem as though the person on the other end of your phone conversation is sitting right beside you in the passenger’s seat.  

Another cool development? You won’t have to struggle to use voice recognition technologies because of your noisy in-car cabin (that’s right, serenely quiet cabins will no longer be exclusive to luxury cars). Vehicles will continue to evolve to meet the strictest CAFÉ and emissions standards, while the negative acoustic side-effects from less damping materials will be countered using software to remove unwanted engine sound. And your engine in 2017 might really sound like purring (or growling, if that’s your preference), as signature sounds are enabled by engine sound enhancement software. So not only will you not feel crazy for talking to your car, you’ll also be less frustrated as you do so cruising down the interstate. 

Beyond 2017: Look ma, no hands!
While it won’t happen quite as soon as 2017, autonomous cars will hit the roads in the relatively near future, forever changing the dynamic of the road trip. Will road trips be more accessible for the elderly and others who can’t physically drive long distances? Will the new meaning of "cruise control" make the road trip more or less enjoyable? All of these considerations are up for discussion. One thing is certain: many of the advanced safety systems of today and 2017 are precursors to cars that could drive themselves. One such example of what the future of autonomous driving will look like is the University of Parma’s DEEVA autonomous car project being developed by the Artificial Vision and Intelligent Systems Laboratory (VisLab).  

How is in-car technology playing a role in your current summer road trip? How do you want it to improve your future road trips? Stay tuned to our QNX_Auto Twitter account and Facebook page for weekly discussions throughout the rest of the summer about 2017 has in store for your road trip.

Full-duplex in the car? Who even knows what this means?

I know lots of people don't understand full-duplex. Hell, I think most people have never even heard of it. Unfortunately, these same people have repeatedly experienced its poor cousin — half-duplex — without really understanding either.

Please don't take me wrong. I'm not patronizing. I spent a few years in telecoms and barely understand it myself. What I do know is that half-duplex = bad. And that full-duplex = good.

So when I talked to my colleagues at the office today, I knew we were using half-duplex. How did I know? I started to say something and so did someone else at the other end of the line. I couldn't hear them talking while I was talking (a certain amount of latency adds to the circus) so I stopped talking... and so did they. Then there were lots of simultaneous barely-understood apologies and a long uncomfortable silence. Then we both tried to break the silence at the same time; more uncomfortable silence. Very awkward and distracting. I know you know what I mean.

So... um... could someone please fix this? I mean, we send people to the moon after all.

I hate to blow our own (proverbial) horn (well sometimes) but believe me, I have to. QNX has THE best audio technology solution in or out of the car. And this technology, just so happens to be in the new QNX technology concept car at CES. Yes, really!

Today I witnessed a conversation in the QNX booth between someone in the Bentley and someone in a sound-proof booth. Well, to my (sheer) delight, one person talked while the other person talked over him... and both heard the other! Just like a real face-to-face conversation with overlapping dialogue. It was so natural, it almost slipped by as if it were expected:



In a world where communication is more often than not at the root of all successes and failures, I think this is nothing short of a long-overdue miracle.

QNX at CES: The media’s take

No, CES isn’t over yet. But the technology concept cars showcased in the QNX booth have already stoked the interest of journalists attending the event — and even of some not attending the event. So here, in no particular order, are examples of what they're saying.

Oh, and I’ve added a couple of stories that aren’t strictly CES-related, but appeared this week. They were too relevant to pass up.

• Engadget, Sean Cooper — Mercedes-Benz CLA45 AMG with QNX CAR for Infotainment hands-on
   
• Canadian Press, David Friend — Ottawa firm masters car sounds
   
• Fast Company, Chuck Tannert — Can Computers Drive Better Than Humans?
   
• Fast Company, Chuck Tannert — 10 Autonomous Driving Companies to Watch
   
• GigaOm, Kevin Fitchard — What do BlackBerry, Qualcomm and Nokia have in common? The connected car
   
• CrackBerry.com, Adam Zeis — In the driver's seat with QNX at CES 2015 (video)
   
• Engadget, Sarah Silbert — With the Snapdragon 602A, Qualcomm looks to improve the connected car
   
• i3, Rob Calem — Driverless Cars on the Rise
   
• The Peggy Smedley Show — Andrew Poliak of QNX at CES (audio interview discussing QNX technology concept cars and future of connected vehicles)
   
• Fox 4 Dallas, Steve Noviello — Consumer Electronics Show (video; jump to the :50 mark)
   
• BerryReview, Ronen Halevy — QNX Shows Off With 13 Partners at CES 
   
• AutoGuide, Sami Haj-Assaad — QNX Shows Tech Filled CLA45 AMG, Kia Soul at CES
   

That's it for now. I aim to post more stories and videos early next week. Stay tuned.

Building (sound) character into cars

Tina Jeffrey

Modern engines are overachievers when it comes to fuel efficiency — but they often score a C minus in the sound department. Introducing a solution that can make a subtle but effective difference.

Car engines don’t sound like they used to. Correction: They don’t sound as good as they used to. And for that, you can blame modern fuel-saving techniques, such as the practice of deactivating cylinders when engine load is light. Still, if you’re an automaker, delivering an optimal engine sound is critical to ensuring a satisfying user experience. To address this need, we’ve released QNX Acoustics for Engine Sound Enhancement (ESE), a complementary technology to our solution for active noise control.

The why

We first demonstrated our ESE technology at 2015 CES
in the QNX technology concept car for acoustics.

Many people assume, erroneously, that ESE is about giving cars an outsized sonic personality — such as making a Smart ForTwo snarl like an SRT Hellcat. While that is certainly possible, most automakers will use ESE to augment engine sounds in subtle but effective ways that bolster the emotional connection between car and driver — just like engine sounds did in the past. It boils down to creating a compelling acoustic experience for drivers and passengers alike.

ESE isn’t new. Traditionally, automakers have used mechanical solutions that modify the design of the exhaust system or intake pipes to differentiate the sound of their vehicles. Today, automakers are shifting to software-based ESE, which costs less and does a better job at augmenting engine sounds that have been degraded by new, efficient engine designs. With QNX Acoustics for Engine Sound Enhancement, automakers can accurately preserve an existing engine sound for use in a new model, craft a unique sound to market a new brand, or offer distinct sounds associated with different transmission modes, such as sport or economy.

The how
QNX Acoustics for Engine Sound Enhancement is entirely software based. It comprises a runtime library that augments naturally transmitted engine sounds as well as a design tool that provides several advanced features for defining and tuning engine-sound profiles. The library runs on the infotainment system or on the audio system DSP and plays synthesized sound synchronized to the engine’s real-time data: RPM, speed, throttle position, transmission mode, etc.




The ESE designer tool enables sound designers to create, refashion, and audition sounds directly on their desktops by graphically defining the mapping between a synthesized engine-sound profile and real-time engine parameters. The tool supports both granular and additive synthesis, along with a variety of digital signal processing techniques to configure the audio path, including gain, filter, and static equalization control.



The value
QNX Acoustics for Engine Sound Enhancement offers automakers numerous benefits in the design of sound experiences that best reflect their brand:

• Ability to design consistent powertrain sounds across the full engine operating range
   
• Small footprint runtime library that can be ported to virtually any DSP or CPU running Linux or the QNX OS, making it easy to customize all vehicle models and to leverage work done in existing models
   
• Tight integration with other QNX acoustics middleware libraries, including QNX Acoustics for Active Noise Control, enabling automakers to holistically shape their interior vehicle soundscape
   
• Dedicated acoustic engineers that can support development and pre-production activities, including porting to customer-specific hardware, system audio path verification, and platform and vehicle acoustic tuning
   

If you’re with an automaker or Tier One and would like to discuss how QNX Acoustics for ESE can address your project requirements, I invite you to contact us at anc@qnx.com.

In the meantime, learn more about this solution on the QNX website.