QNX has been showcasing car technologies at CES for a few years now. This time, it had the Porche Carrera GT to show off their latest version of the platform called Car 2. It includes an auto centric HTML5 framework. In addition to powering in-car infotainment systems, the real-time OS drives
dashboard instrumentation clusters. The OS also provides the acoustic processing systems for hands-free voice in many cars.
Some of the highlights include a center console with an NFC chip (these chips are embedded in other places in the car, too,) for instant pairing with a BlackBerry phone. The console's touch interface looks essentially like a BlackBerry PlayBook screen, with similar menus and controls. From here, a driver (or hopefully a passenger) can send video to the screens on the backs of the headrest (in this case, those screens were BlackBerry PlayBooks), control audio, and so on.
Finally, the reconfigurable instrumentation cluster…think of a programmable digital message board that can be customized to the driver, and even customized to the situation. With the Porsche, for instance, a driver may want to take it out onto a track, and the track can actually be displayed in the console. The tachometer doesn't just redline, the entire thing beams red. Navigation information can be pushed onto the driver's console, and so on. The instrumentation cluster is part of the QNX toolkit.
The Car 2 platform from QNX has won the CNET Best of CES 2012 award in the Car Tech category, which is one of the 10 categories at the official awards of the show. Check out the video below for a low down on the new QNX platform.