Automakers Inspire with Wearable Tech

Sep 24, 2015

Consumer interest in “wearables” is growing, and automakers are responding—increasingly finding new and innovative ways to tie devices such as smart watches to their vehicles’ infotainment systems and other in-vehicle electronics. Now used mainly for convenience, though, the integration of cars and wearables is far from trivial. Like seat belts and airbags, experts say it’s a potentially life-saving development.

Wearables’ integration with cars first debuted in September 2013 at the Frankfurt Motor Show, when Nissan introduced its proprietary Nismo watch. It featured a built-in heart rate monitor and linked with a car to access (and correlate to) telematics and performance data while driving on a race track and monitor (and correlate) data such as average speed and performance. Soon after, at the 2014 International CES in Las Vegas, Mercedes-Benz showed off its Digital Drive Style app for the Pebble smart watch and BMW unveiled the i Remote concept app for Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smart watch. Moving from wrist to face, Hyundai bowed its Blue Link concept app for Google Glass smart eyeglasses then, too.

This year, the trend has accelerated. At the 2015 International CES in January, Hyundai launched its Blue Link app for Android Wear smart watches, and Audi presented its “mobile key” smart watch equipped with wireless NFC (near field communications) technology, which works even when the device’s battery is drained. In April, Porsche premiered its Porsche Connect app for Apple Watch, and BMW brought forth its finished i Remote app for the Apple Watch.

At the inaugural 2015 International CES Asia in Shanghai, China, Cadillac showed an Apple Watch app. Also in May, Volkswagen announced its Car-Net app for Apple Watch, and Hyundai followed with its Blue Link app for the wearable in June. Volvo launched its Volvo on Call smart watch app for Apple and Android in June. Due next was Ford’s MyFord Mobile app for Android Wear, to be followed by a version for Apple Watch. Even more apps are sure to come later.

These apps are riding the rising wave of smart watch popularity. According to CEA’s U.S. Consumer Electronics Sales and Forecasts report issued in July, an aggregate of 2.355 million smart watches were sold to dealers nationwide in 2014, of a total 3.925 million units sold to dealers worldwide last year. This year, CEA is forecasting U.S. smart watch unit sales will rise 250 percent to 8.243 million units, and worldwide sales will rise 185 percent to 11.186 million units.

In 2019, CEA predicts, U.S. smart watch sales to dealers will total 19.289 million units, and worldwide sales will total 25.954 million units. (Percentage gains will be much less lofty—ranging from 33 percent next year to just 10 percent in 2019 in the U.S.)

Meanwhile, a report from ABI Research titled In-Vehicle Wearable Integration, published in June 2014, predicts a similar growth pattern for smart watch-enabled cars worldwide.

The number of U.S. vehicles with installed smart watch capabilities will grow from zero last year and just 300,000 this year to 3.6 million by 2019, the ABI report says. There will be 8.9 million such vehicles by 2023, it says.

In Search of the Killer App

Right now, smart watches are merely extensions of smartphones and their vehicle-oriented apps from automakers, notes Steve Koenig, senior director of market research at CEA. The smart watch is “just another platform upon which consumers can take advantage of various connected vehicle applications,” he says.

“The smartphone remains the premier appliance that consumers are bringing in to the car to augment their digital experience there,” Koenig says. “The smart watch is still very much in the experimentation phase. What’s been missing with the smart watches is a killer app.”

But the distinguishing use for smart watches with cars will not necessarily be exotic, Koenig adds. “Simplicity may ultimately be the fertile soil in which to cultivate more consumer engagement,” he says.

To-date, five use cases have predominated among automotive smart watch apps, replicated en masse from their smartphone app counterparts, notes Dominique Bonte, vice president and group director for telematics at ABI Research in Brussels, Belgium. They are pedestrian navigation (directing the user to his final destination from wherever he parked nearby); remote control (start/stop engine and lock/unlock doors); parking spot location reminder and navigation; public transit information (such as bus or subway routes near a parking spot); and features for electric vehicles (such as remaining charge and range, or a reminder when charging is complete).

Like the smartphone, Bonte says, the smart watch is an extension of the vehicle’s own built-in user interface (UI). “It’s about extending that experience outside the car, integrating the car in the wider environment, and the wearable is a great form factor to do that. The wearable seems to be that unifying form factor that will be the device of choice for controlling our entire set of connected devices, including the car, as well as homes,” he says.

However, he also sees no “killer app” now tying a smart watch to an automobile.

In fact, smart eyewear like Google Glass (now discontinued after a years-long beta test period) offers an even better opportunity for car integration than smart watches, Bonte adds. Functioning as a low-cost head-up display, it puts information directly in a user’s line of sight and doesn’t distract like a glance at a wrist-worn device, he asserts.

Fitness apps present one of the more interesting possibilities for integrating smart watches in vehicle infotainment systems, suggests Richard Doherty, research director at The Envisioneering Group in Seaford, NY. Automakers’ engineers with whom he has spoken have ideas for how to integrate, for example, a Fitbit device in a vehicle, although automakers’ marketing executives haven’t acknowledged those ideas yet, he says.

Moreover, Doherty points out, the latest iPhone models contain a barometric pressure sensor. It could be utilized by an in-vehicle technology, he theorizes, to surmise whether a driver’s alertness level is decreasing as ambient air pressure drops with increasing altitude. And he expects automakers to begin supporting this scenario as soon as next year, he says.

Of course, a barometric pressure sensor in a smart watch could integrate with the vehicle similarly. The Apple Watch also may contain a barometric pressure sensor, but “tear downs” of the device have been inconclusive on this matter, Doherty notes.

A Tap on the Wrist, An Accident Avoided

While automakers are mostly focusing on convenience features today, some are exploring smart watch integrations aimed at improving driver performance, avoiding accidents and saving lives.

Case in point: Toyota’s latest Driver Awareness Research Vehicle, which debuted June 2014 at the Aspen Ideas Festival. It integrated a Pebble smart watch to make a game of safe driving—providing a “driving score” based on acceleration, braking, cornering, handling and turn signal use— in addition to utilitarian functions such as remote control of the engine, trunk door and windows, and an emergency panic mode to flash the car’s lights, honk its horn and snap surveillance photos with internal and external cameras.

The idea was to find new uses for smart watches “that could be meaningful to the user,” says Jason Schulz, business development manager at Toyota Motor North America Inc., in Torrance, Calif.

Features like the panic mode add incremental value to the relationship between the vehicle and the user, he reasons. “What really makes the difference,” he declares, is leveraging smart watches and other wearables to “get the vehicle into the quantified self-network”— so that the vehicle can understand the state of the driver and other environmental factors, try to improve the driver’s awareness, and help him focus on the task of driving. “That’s where the real meaningful stuff starts to come into play,” Schulz says.

“We’re really in the early stages, going from the early adopter and passing over the chasm potentially with wearables, and if it makes it over, and everybody has smart devices and wearables, we’re going to find more useful ways to benefit the users,” says David Hatton, global product manager for connected vehicle and services at Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, Mich.

Ford began working on its first smart watch app for the Pebble and Android Wear about one year ago as a proof of concept focused on monitoring a user’s health, but later switched to developing a corollary to its MyFord Mobile smartphone app for EV drivers. The finished Ford smart watch app for iOS and Android was due to be released late summer 2015.

Currently, wearables add convenience for users, Hatton says. In the future, he anticipates that combining sensor data from the vehicle and the wearable will yield even more “useful interactions” that boost safety by warning drivers of impending dangers through the device.

Two possible implementations harness the Apple Watch’s “taptic” technology to warn the driver of a slippery road ahead, or to let him know when the navigation system wants him to turn at an intersection, says David Holocek, director of connected products and services at Volvo Cars in Gothenburg, Sweden. The former example is a variation on a vehicle-to-vehicle, cloud-based communications capability that Volvo now is testing in Sweden and Norway.

Nevertheless, the new Volvo on Call smart watch app does not implement either of these functions. It’s a convenience tool, allowing users to lock or unlock the vehicle’s doors, locate the vehicle, check its fuel level, and program the heater or air conditioning to precondition the cabin at a set time.

Wearables are “all about making people’s lives more enjoyable and easier,” Holocek says. “What we feel is interesting is when the car becomes a full citizen of the networked society, of the ecosystem,” autonomously communicating through the Internet to integrate with services and do many things for end users. “Part of it will be connected to wearable technology of various sorts,” while some of the rest will remain fully integrated in the vehicle, he says.

“There’s tremendous upside to all of this,” proclaims Envisioneering’s Doherty. “Automakers know they can count on this ecosystem of innovation from Apple and Android and independents like Fitbit— they’re really headed toward a new era of driver fitness and confidence that wouldn’t be possible any other way.”

Source: i3 Magazine