How Ford Will Upgrade Owners' Display Screens 215
gManZboy writes "'Sometime early next year, Ford will mail USB sticks to about 250,000 owners of vehicles with its advanced touchscreen control panel. The stick will contain a major upgrade to the software for that screen. With it, Ford breaks the model in which the technology in a car essentially stayed unchanged from assembly line to junk yard' — and Ford becomes a software company. This shift created a hot new tech job at Ford: human-machine interface engineers — people who come from a range of backgrounds, from software development to mechanical engineers, and who can live in the worlds of art and science at once."
HMI in automotive is not new (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know for Ford, but German automotive manufacturers have dealt with human/machine interfacing for a very long time,
and in the process have not focussed on software/screen only, but also added many more interfacing methods like buttons, dials, cameras facing into the car and outside.
Names that come to mind are car manufacturers (Audi, BMW, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz) and their suppliers (Continental, Hella, Vector Informatik).
The whole topic has been covered not by computer science or engineers, but very much by information science.
So maybe you want to have a look there if you are into this topic.
Keywords: driver assistance, hmi, navigation systems
- Hubert
Re:what a summary! (Score:5, Informative)
This.
Offshoring, in my experience over the past 3-4 years, has been more trouble than it is worth. The time you spend babysitting these novice developers eats up whatever you "saved" by paying them 1/4 of your local wage, and it drives that project manager absolutely batshit insane. And then it takes them at least twice as long to do anything.
I often get the impression most of these guys can't be bothered to think for themselves. If you tell them "Add a newsletter subscription form", they will add the form, sure, a form that does nothing when you click Submit. It doesn't matter that the same guy has been working on your site for over a year, he's still not going to realize you didn't just want an inert form on your website. If you then say "make it insert into the database", hey great, now it's inserting into the database - in some random table that isn't the subscriptions table! So the net result is you practically write p-code, which they then thinly translate into Java or PHP or whatever.
Some shops can apparently tolerate this level of mediocrity. We've tried offshoring a few times, thinking maybe we had bad luck the first few times... nope, always the same bullshit, so that's why I now know how to configure and script Asterisk IVRs. We wanted to pay someone to just get it done since it was well outside our expertise, but in the end we had to do it over from scratch because all the offshore contractors we hired were complete imbeciles - so much for calling themselves Asterisk experts!
Re:Congrats to the lucky ones (Score:5, Informative)
Get a ODB-II reader.
Re:uhh.. article years too late.. (Score:5, Informative)
"Heck, GM radios (yes, made by delco or whoever) come with certain features locked out.. to unlock say the input port to work with XM requires plugging it into the shop computer and basically "flipping some bits" in the radio firmware (for lack of better terms) to enable the feature."
Wrong. to enable XM radio you plug in the Receiver module, on power up you press and hold AUX intil the display flashes. it then detects any new devices and enables them.
They don't plug it into the shop computer unless you call the guy smearing grease and dirt all over the inside of the car a "computer"
Re:what a summary! (Score:5, Informative)
This.
Offshoring, in my experience over the past 3-4 years, has been more trouble than it is worth.
The work ethics and habits of American workers evolved over the decades when long career in one company with a gold watch and a pension. They work in certain way. The management on its part should be nurturing the workers who have a deep understanding of the company and the customers, especially those workers who cultivate skills that can not be useful seeking employment elsewhere. But management ditched the gold watch, picked up the golden parachute.
The work ethics and the habits of the body-shopping firms evolved in a climate where the relationship is definitely not long term. Both sides knew it. Both sides expected the other side to take maximum advantage of it. American management went in thinking American work ethics in third-world prices. But it is not dealing with employees but intermediate contractors. Even if the body-shopping contractors have long term employees who are loyal, they would be loyal to the contractor, not to the outsourcing companies. Further everyone knows the cluelessness of the middle management. So they found every loop hole in the contract, every stretchable point, every exploitable gap and the body shopping contractors took the American management to the cleaners faster than you can say "aloo gobi, channa masala, butter nan and mango lassi please".
There are world class employees and workers in India. But they (I should say we, because I am a desi who would not work for a desi salary) go up the value chain pretty quickly and are not available for hire at third world prices. What you do get for third world prices are third world class work.
Re:HMI in automotive is not new (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think bringing up BMW in this conversation will do you any favors.
They were almost universally flamed for iDrive when it came out and the subsequent upgrades have only made it 'less bad'.
Re:"with it, Ford breaks" (Score:5, Informative)
no, Ford does in-house software development with help from Microsoft. I've a relative who does that, he is Ford employee.
Re:"with it, Ford breaks" (Score:3, Informative)
I worked on the Sync project. Part of the reason MSFT was all over the marketing materials is that MS was the one running the campaigns. Ford (and suppliers) did a lot of work, and currently, MS is involved as little as possible. I didn't work on the frontend, but from what I understand, there is an interface. If changes must change anything past the interface, they need to negotiate and pay for changes from MS. Ford does this as little as possible, because they don't want to pay extra... and they don't want to work with MS. Ford and MS are two gigantic companies used to pretty much pushing everyone around and it didn't take long for the relationship to go sour.