At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, we're showing all our products from HERE for Android to HERE Auto. But our location technology also gets into your hands through our business partners. At the show, as well as our own products, you can experience what happens when the HERE location cloud is used by NVIDIA, BMW, Continental and Nokia Networks.
The world is talking about NVIDIA for having introduced the Tegra X1 last Sunday. One of the most powerful mobile processors in the world, it can carry out more than a trillion operations per second despite low power consumption.
NVIDIA is well-known for graphics processors that speed up videogames. But the Tegra X1 isn’t for desktop PCs at home: the company has built it for cars. Currently the likes of BMW, Audi, and others are using the company’s hardware to help reinvent the driving experience with beautiful digital gauges, multimedia and a revolutionary navigation experience.
The first car computers to feature the Tegra X1 will have new digital cockpits with ultra-realistic 3D graphics and will process video from up to 12 high-definition video cameras to help create a 360-degree view around the car.
There’s an increasing crossover between what the auto industry wants to put into cars and the videogame sector. When we interviewed him about the next generation of 3D and high definition (HD) maps, our colleague Michael Limber said, “We’re making maps for a new generation. My teenage son expects far more from his media than I did at his age. There’s an expectation that everything is interactive. Everything can be touched and manipulated.”
So we teamed up with NVIDIA to demonstrate what their newest Tegra X1 and our futuristic maps can do for the drivers of tomorrow. The results are stunning. The Tegra X1’s processing power really bring our newest 3D maps alive, allowing drivers to interact with the world through the cockpit.
The level of detail in these new maps and the fluidity with which we want drivers to be able to manipulate them requires no ordinary GPU to power the displays. And that’s exactly what NVIDIA has delivered with the Tegra X1.
You won’t have missed the news earlier this week that HERE is partnering with BMW to provide location intelligence for its new Intelligent Drive in-car unit. Going beyond just navigation, the device is deeply integrated into the vehicle to do things like guiding you to the nearest gas station from your preferred chain, at exactly the point that you’d normally fill-up the tank. Meanwhile, cloud-based location smarts will keep you away from heavy traffic, advise you of the best parking spots near your destination, and synchronise with apps for phones, TV and smartwatches.
We’ve been working with Continental for over a year now to develop its Dynamic eHorizon technology. This allows vehicles to tap into the HERE location cloud and sensor readings from other vehicles around you to understand a slice of the future. It can effectively ‘see’ what’s happening on the road ahead and inform the driver when it’s time to slow down because there’s heavy traffic around the next corner, or to re-route because there’s a more efficient alternative given the current conditions.
Like Continental, Liquid Applications from our sister company Nokia Networks is also providing drivers with a peek into the future. The Liquid Applications partnership with HERE is about preventing accidents, though – specifically by signaling the cars behind to slow down the moment an incident occurs.
This requires a response time measured in milliseconds to be effective, which in turn requires a significant breakthrough in the speed of wireless communications. Rather than routing these messages all the way through telecoms networks, or requiring investment in WiFi infrastructure along roads, Liquid Applications turns mobile phone base-stations into mini-exchanges and processes the messages right at the point of the incident.
If you’re in Vegas for CES, come along and see us – and demos of all these products – at booth CP2 in the Central Plaza of the convention center.
