Windows Automotive Customer Solution Case Study
Panasonic, which enjoys top-class share in the car navigation market, has adopted Microsoft Windows Automotive for its aftermarket products.
Panasonic Corporation Automotive Systems Company

Overview

Country: Japan Industry: Automotive Customer Profile A subsidiary of Panasonic Corporation dedicated to the development, manufacture, and sales of on-board multimedia products and which also retails a variety of car electronics products manufactured by the Panasonic group. Business Situation The limits imposed by conventional operating system in the support of advanced functions and the provision of multiple functions led to the evaluation of Windows Automotive as an alternative. Solution Panasonic adopted Windows Automotive as the operating system for their "Strada" car navigation systems, so as to realize more efficient development while being able to quickly respond to market needs. Benefits Greatly improved their development efficiency Superior development productivity Easy-to-use and compatibility with other systems Trouble-free development with reliable technical support
It has greatly improved their development efficiency and has made their development processes capable of responding to a wide range of market demands.
Car navigation systems have been widely adopted and are now common in commercial vehicles including taxis, as well as in passenger cars. The design of the latest car navigation systems must, however, be capable of supporting devices such as car audio, terrestrial digital television, mobile telephones, and home electronics appliances, as well as providing high-definition map displays and advanced navigation functions that are linked to the global positioning system (GPS), all in shorter development period. In response to these demands, Panasonic adopted Windows Automotive as the operating system for their "Strada" car navigation systems. Business Needs
Car navigation systems were first developed in Japan and it is said that about 80% of all units sold on the world market (excluding PND (Personal Navigation Devices)) are manufactured by Japanese companies. In the domestic market, however, Japanese manufacturers must be able to apply comprehensive technological capabilities to provide performance, functionality, quality, and so forth, in order to be capable of responding to diversifying users needs while always keeping up with intense development competition. Even for Panasonic, the development of car navigation systems first presented many difficulties. To compensate for the then-lacking digital maps and the low-precision GPS performance, they developed software navigation techniques such as one called map matching, which serves to correctly locate the position of a vehicle by comparing information on the vehicles actual route and the map. In addition, they also needed to cope with hardware -related problems such as changes in the components resulting from temperature changes, as well as physical failures caused by dust or vibration. Despite such difficult beginnings, they have evolved their navigation systems to the point where they lead the worldwide market with its top-level precision navigation today.
Superb development environment that greatly reduces development costs and which enables the development of products with extra added value.
A car navigation system is a product in which the software is a very important element. So, the choice of the operating system is an important point. But in those days, our only options for embedded operating systems were those dedicated to relatively small-sized systems such as ITRON, which offered a very limited set of functions (Mr. Tanaka). ITRON is a real-time operating system developed through cooperation between industry and academia. Its specifications are open and, because of its cost advantages, many manufacturers in a wide range of industries adopted it as an embedded operating system. With the advance of related technologies, however, the development of car navigation systems has seen waves of performance increases and functional improvements. From the latter half of the 1990s, we had to support features that were not originally oriented to navigation systems, such as higher-quality displays and additional information like VICS (Vehicle Information and Communication System), and then in the 2000s, the Internet and mobile phones" said Mr. Obuchi, a member of the Domestic Sales Business Unit of Panasonic Corporation Automotive Systems Company.
operability. However, the touch-panel user interface forces the user to make selections one by one, so the number of screens inevitably increases. In the past, to cope with increased program development due to these changes in the user interface, and to support communication features such as internet and mobile phones, as well as to support digital television, it was necessary to continue to develop individual software applications. Any increase in the number of development man-hours influences the time required for development. In particular, in the intense market for aftermarket car navigation products, the shortening of the development period is an important issue. In addition to reducing the development period, it is also necessary to reduce the number of development man-hours in order to improve technological capabilities and provide support for multifunctional capabilities in the commercial market despite intense competition. Thus, with the ultimate goal of achieving more efficient development, we started considering migration to Windows Automotive in 2005. We had been considering introduction of Windows ever since the release of Windows CE Automotive, but we could not bring ourselves to adopt it because of problems with the boot-up time, response time, memory restrictions, and so forth. However, the release of Windows Automotive offered greatly improved performance and an attractive development environment, so we evaluated whether we could introduce it from a practical perspective. For us, one of the most important matters was whether the development environment offered sufficient user interface implementation tools and analysis support tools (Mr. Tanaka).

Solution

ITRON, which they had been using, is a compact operating system that provides a satisfactory processing speed, but it also presented a problem in that they had to create their own development tools and development environments. In addition, the operating system offered poor support of multimedia such as music and imaging, so they had to develop middleware and applications, as well as design screens themselves. For example, most recent car navigation systems employ a touch-panel for better
Mr. Tanaka Domestic Sales Business Unit, Panasonic Corporation Automotive Systems Company
Easy-to-use and compatible with other systems and data types to fully exploit the advantages of the Windows platform.
Up until then, the company had to create their own program development tools and modules for multimedia image processing, communication processing and so forth, but Windows Automotive incorporates these as standard, thus realizing a huge reduction in general development man-hours. This reduction in man-hours allows us to apply more manpower to the development of higher performance and multifunction capabilities. This is also linked to the technological competitiveness required for aftermarket products, too. At the beginning of the development environment migration from ITRON, the number of man-hours increased temporarily, but a large cost reduction was ultimately expected. This was how Panasonics aftermarket products department decided to adopt Windows Automotive in 2006 and immediately started using it for practical product development.
These development tools are based on Windows CE 5.0 Platform Builder, which provides an integrated development environment equivalent to that of Microsoft Visual Studio. In addition, interfaces, development tools, and development guidelines specifically for Windows Automotive are available, thus providing a full-featured and efficient development environment. In the case of car navigation systems, for example, turning off the engine causes the power supply to the system to be suddenly cut off, making it difficult to design a more convenient power-off arrangement. Windows Automotive, however, provides system power-off functions that have been optimized for on-board infotainment systems, thus freeing manufacturers from the need to develop this aspect of their programs. Moreover, to enable intercommunication with mobile phones, Windows Automotive ships with communication modules, interfaces, and so forth. So, manufacturers can concentrate on development, making sure that they conform to prescribed specifications, and dont have to develop these programs. Windows Automotive lets designers who are not programmers directly develop user interfaces on a PC. They can achieve this by making use of the tools provided by Windows Automotive without developing in-house tools. Consequently, they can spend more time on improving user interfaces and operability, and can improve the competitiveness and technological level of the companys products.

Benefits/Results

For embedded products, migration of the platform is not easy. This is even truer if the system has been used for a long time. In spite of difficulty of the task, however, migration to Windows Automotive requires very little time and improves the development efficiency, allowing the time saved to be applied to technology support, user support, and other development for adding value to the aftermarket products. Thus, manufacturers can offer products that are technically superior and more attractive in the highly competitive market for car navigation systems.
Mr. Sugauchi Domestic Sales Business Unit, Panasonic Corporation Automotive Systems Company

High processing speeds

The requirement for high-speed processing is another issue specific to car navigation systems, so one major advantage of Windows Automotive is that it provides a level of performance equivalent to ITRON. In Windows Automotive, boot-up and response
Superb development environment
The Windows Automotive platform is designed for on-board infotainment systems. A particularly salient point is that Microsoft has incorporated development tools for car navigation systems.
Trouble-free development was realized in spite of migrating to a new system, which is normally a challenging task. Development productivity with Windows Automotive is exceptionally high.
times are as short as they can be, so its specifications are safely applicable to on -board infotainment systems that demand secure, high-speed processing while also offering high levels of functionality. To attain high processing speeds, the management of system resources such as memory usage and CPU run time is also an important factor. Windows Automotive ships with a set of system optimization tools called Automotive System Tools, which allow developers to quickly understand an entire system, so that they can easily perform system tuning to achieve higher speeds, as well as identifying problem processes. To handle failures, ITRON required the development of logging programs, but Windows Automotive not only accurately logs operations but also ensures that operational information remains in memory even if the system goes down, which greatly aids in fault analysis. Because we were using the platform for the first time, we were anxious about many different aspects, but the rapid support provided by Microsoft was extremely helpful. They were always there to provide us with answers, so if we ever hit a problem, we knew that we could rely on them for support (Mr. Obuchi).

For Panasonic, the good quality of the development environment, as well as the excellent post-introduction support that is provided by Microsoft, greatly contributed to the decision to migrate to Windows Automotive. As development periods are required to be shorter, quick support is absolutely essential, even when good development tools are available. From this aspect, also, Windows Automotive has a qualifying score.
Migration of development from servers to PCs
Panasonic currently develops car navigation systems on servers and actual hardware, but they are examining their migration to development on PCs in the future. Now that we have migrated to the Windows platform, we are also planning to migrate our development work, which is currently done using actual hardware, to Windows PCs. We are examining how the verification time can be reduced by performing hardware verification on PCs, so that we dont have to build so many prototypes (Mr. Tanaka). Car navigation systems require the concurrent development of software and hardware, so the development time cannot be shortened simply by streamlining the software development. To increase the overall development efficiency, therefore, we must also improve the efficiency of the hardware-related development. Verification on a PC involves emulating the hardware on the PC and running the developed programs on the emulated hardware. With Windows Automotive, which is a Windows platform, this would be easier to realize.
Mr. Obuchi Domestic Sales Business Unit, Panasonic Corporation Automotive Systems Company
The CN-HX1000D became Panasonics first aftermarket product to incorporate Windows Automotive
2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIES, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Document published in 2009

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