By RemotiveLabs

Developing With Drive Playback

Volvo Cars is finding new ways to enable AAOS development in the automotive industry using standardized ways to communicate vehicle signal data (according to COVESA’s Vehicle Signal Specification VSS) with modern and collaborative tooling i.e., RemotiveLabs.

Developing apps and infotainment content in the automotive industry is cumbersome. The traditional tooling available is not sufficient to simulate multiple car data points. Volvo Cars developers are leading the way with new and flexible means of using vehicle signal data where third-party app developers can access it. Simultaneously this means that developers at OEMs are able to take full ownership of the debugging process.

Recent demo at the COVESA All Members Meeting

Together with RemotiveLabs, Volvo Cars recently demonstrated how they use the RemotiveBroker to playback drive cycles that map OEM proprietary vehicle signals and convert them to standardized vehicle signals (VSS) in an open-source Android Automotive emulator. This solution is used to populate a prototype or Android VHAL with real data and share it with third-party developers.

Peter Winzell, Volvo Cars explains: “For prototyping new applications, the approach with RemotiveLabs helping us populate the Android API with standardized signal data is really helpful. The APIs Google produces don’t cover fully what we need. We always need to add sensor data for relevant prototyping and this is a quite easy way of doing it.”

Volvo Cars software developers Kristoffer Nilsson and Peter Winzell together with RemotiveLabs Emil Dautovic. Renjith Rajagopal, Volvo Cars, demoed the solution live at the recent COVESA All Members Meeting.

By providing third-party developers with the tools they need to create innovative automotive apps, Volvo Cars supports the developer community and creates new ways of working relevant for the automotive industry in general. Further the setup enables exploration of ‘Edge Device Computation’ use cases by leveraging pre-recorded drive vehicle data from RemotiveBroker. Kristoffer Nilsson, Volvo Cars: “By providing real vehicle data from pre-recorded drive cycles using RemotiveLabs to AOSP (Android Open Source Project) through the Vehicle HAL, we open up the possibilities to create powerful open source emulators and tools to attract the developer community and make the development of automotive applications more available”.

The importance of automotive collaboration

RemotiveLabs recently joined COVESA due to the collaborative possibilities that their initiatives including VSS helps to enable between OEMs and third-party developers. You can test in the RemotiveLabs demo how to convert OEM data to VSS format – try it yourself at RemotiveLabs demo. Initiatives under the COVESA umbrella will have a large impact on automotive software development going forward and OEMs engagement and collaboration will be key for the success. Two additional such initiatives are the AOSP app framework standardization and VISS (the Vehicle Information Service Specification hosted by W3C) where the RemotiveLabs platform could serve as a vehicle data provider.

Thanks to the coordination of the technical leadership and a great turnout for the technical programs, there was significant engagement and progress made at the recent COVESA All Member Meeting in Porto, Portugal.

Vehicle Signal Specification currently has a significant buzz in the industry and there are multiple perspectives as to where it fits and how to use it. Hence, there is a common theme and push of making VSS real, practical and useable. Many of the sessions and workshops held in Porto aligned with moving this forward.

• Data Centric Architectures – Christian Muhlbauer, BMW and Stephen Lawrence, Renesas
• VSS Deployment Scenarios – Erik Jaegervall, Bosch
• Grounding Ontologies and Modeling in the Practical – Daniel Alverez-Coello, BMW
• Using VSS to Interact with AUTOSAR Systems (VSS Vehicle API) – Erik Jaegervall Bosch
• Developing with Drive Playback – Emil Dautovic, RemotiveLabs, Peter Winzell, Volvo, Renjith Rajagopal, Volvo, Kristoffer Nilsson, Volvo
• Architecture and Deployment Scenarios of the VISSv2 Interface – Ulf Bjorkengren, Ford
• Building Bridges with a common Data Middleware: How to enable Data Sharing and Collaboration across different Domains – Christian Muhlbauer, BMW, and Stephen Lawrence, Renesas

VSS 4.0 will be released soon.  We are currently in pre-release status. Our goal moving forward, is to align releases with All Member Meetings.

EV Charging Event Data Aggregation Project, led by Matus Banyay, Ford, Karsten Krabel, Ford, and Achim Henkel, Bosch, continued to align with VSS the data required to support better EV charging experiences. 

EV Power Optimization Project, led by Pradeep Kumar, Mobis, and Chandra Chitikela, Mobis, continued to align with VSS the data required for optimizing battery usage when needed.

A new Commercial Vehicle Birds of a Feather group was proposed by Ted Guild, Geotab and Thomas Spreckley, ETAS after:

• a presentation of FleetOps – Making VSS Practical by Ted Guild, Geotab, and Lowry Snow, AWS
• a demo of FMS + VSS Demo – Sven Erik, ETAS, and Thomas Spreckley, ETAS

As mentioned in Steve Crumb’s recent blog post, there was a proposal for App Framework Standardization by Melina Mascolo, BMW and Camille Ghibaudo, FORVIA that had significant interest from many OEMs, Tier 1s, technology and platform companies.

Alternate ways of accessing vehicle from Android are still very much in mix as well with Android API:  Closing the Gap – Jan Kubovy, BMW.

These are just a few of the AMM technical highlights, but you can find even more sessions and workshops here.

Please engage and get involved and to learn more about what is happening in COVESA, check out our wiki.

COVESA enjoyed another All Member Meeting in the beautiful city of Porto, Portugal, with just over 200 people in attendance. A big "thank you" goes out to our event sponsors and showcase participants shown in the graphic below. Sessions, slides and many videos from the three-day program are found here.

The first half-day of the program focused on introductory sessions to Vehicle Signal Specification and How to engage in COVESA expert groups and projects. Unlike previous AMMs, a three-session focus on vehicle App Stores closed the day with a market view, an appeal for a new COVESA group and then a working session to advance a Charter document for that group.

Wednesday was the busiest day with multiple tracks ranging from a business-level track, to a series of meetings to advance the work of the Data Expert Group.  Matt Jones and Shareef Hakim from Ford tag-teamed on sharing what OEMs are looking for in the future of connected vehicles, followed by a presentation by Gerald Spreitz from Bosch on Vehicles in a Digital Ecosystem. Next up on the business track was an excellent presentation by Maitê Alves Bezerra from Informa Tech Automotive Group on Understanding the Software Defined Future.  Also new to this AMM was the presentation and panel led by Magnus Liljeqvist of Volvo Trucks on Fleet Operations and the value of open collaboration to advance that sector. The remainder of the business track addressed subjects like sustainable software architectures (Aptiv), services as software-enabled revenues (Informa-led panel), the future of in-vehicle experiences (Stellantis) and the legal framework needed for software defined vehicles (RTI). Slides and videos of these sessions can also be found on the event page.

Another highlight on Wednesday was the story telling of two Ford employees that drove from Cologne Germany to Porto in an electric vehicle, and the charging anxieties and victories along the way. Wednesday closed with a member showcase and reception during which several organizations presented their products and services and several vehicles were displayed.

COVESA Community Director Paul Boyes will post a separate blog regarding the highlights of the technical programs, including other new projects (besides the App Store) under discussion within COVESA.

COVESA is finalizing plans for its fall 2023 member meeting, likely to be in the Detroit-area on 10-12 October. Sponsorship opportunities and showcase tables are available and can be secured by contacting Mike Nunnery (mikenunnery@comcast.net).  We look forward to another great event in the fall and hope to see you there.

And another special thanks to our AMM event and showcase sponsors: