TechWorld

In-Car Cigarette Lighter Wireless GPS receiver

2007-07-03T09:23:00.000+05:30

Holux introduces the cigarette lighter powered Bluetooth GPS receiver, GR-239, which incorporates the latest Bluetooth technology and contains the newest generation SiRF starIII chipset for high sensitivity, featuring parallel tracking of up to 20 satellites for signal acquisition greater capability. holux-gr-239-gps-bt

The stylish and handy cigarette lighter-style design allows for hours long use in your car, making your vehicle function as a GPS-embedded system. It uses a car cigarette lighter socket as a power supply saving the trouble of recharging it. GR-239 brings a whole new experience of GPS mobility.

The unit is sold without any bundled mapping software which allows total flexibility in selecting appropriate software for your particular application and operating system. It’s selling for £60 in the UK right now, but there’s no word on availability elsewhere just yet.

Model-driven HMI development

2007-06-22T09:58:00.000+05:30

Tilcon and Telelogic have collaborated to integrate Tilcon's GUI development software with Telelogic's model-driven development environment. The combination aims to help embedded developers design, validate, test, and target advanced 2D/3D HMIs (human-machine interfaces) across multiple platforms, including Windows CE and Windows XP Embedded, the companies said.

Tilcon describes its Interface Development Suite (IDS) as a "complete user interface infrastructure allowing developers to rapidly create custom, high quality user interfaces, instrument clusters, and complex visualization systems." According to the company, IDS is incorporates an intelligent, scalable "Embedded Vector Engine" (EVE) that provides display and user interaction functions for use by client applications. The resulting screens run unchanged on all Tilcon-supported operating systems, including Windows CE, Windows XP, Linux, VxWorks, and QNX, the company claims.

Telelogic's product, Rhapsody, is a Model Driven Development (MDD) environment based on the OMG's (Object Modeling Group) UML 2.1 and System Modeling Language (SysML). According to Telelogic, Rhapsody is optimized for use in real-time and embedded software development, and allows both function-oriented and object-oriented design techniques to co-exist in one environment.

The combination of IDS and Rhapsody results an easy-to-use MDD environment for GUI development, according to the companies. The toolset targets at high-performance automotive telematics systems and advanced instrument clusters, as well as defense and commercial vehicle dashboard displays, consumer products, high-end industrial control and medical monitoring systems, the companies said.

The integration of the two products appears to be immediately available.

Microsoft's Surface Computing

2007-06-20T11:11:00.001+05:30

Microsoft Surface represents a fundamental change in the way we interact with digital content.
With Surface, we can actually grab data with our hands, and move information between objects with natural gestures and touch.
Surface features a 30-inch tabletop display whose unique abilities allow for several people to work independently or simultaneously. All without using mouse or a keyboard.

Microsoft has been developing the first completely new computing platform since the PC — a project that was given the internal code name Milan. This past March, when the project was still operating on the down low.

The product behind the Milan project is called the Microsoft Surface, and the company's unofficial Surface showman is Jeff Gattis.

Till now one of consumer pain points is the frustrating mess of cables, drivers and protocols that people must use to link their peripheral devices to their personal computers. Surface computer has no cables or external USB ports for plugging in peripherals. For that matter, it has no keyboard, no mouse, no trackball — no obvious point of interaction except its screen.

We can take a digital camera and placed it on the Surface. Instantly, digital pictures will be spilled out onto the tabletop. We can touch and drag each picture, it followed our fingers around the screen.

Using two fingers, we can pull the corners of a photo and stretched it to a new size. Then, we can put a cellphone on the surface and drag several photos to it — just like that, the pictures will be uploaded to the phone. One can drag and drop virtual

The mood player

2007-06-19T12:23:00.000+05:30

Inventors: Lee; Peter S.; (Calabasas Park, CA), THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY;C/O
GREENBERG TRAURIG LLP
United States Patent Application : 20060005226
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Walt Disney would surely be pleased with some of the new ideas being patented by Disney's Californian headquarters.

Alongside digital downloads for fast food restaurants, the company has devised a media player that selects songs based on its owner's latest mood.

A system for synchronizing a portable media player for downloading of content and playing the downloaded content on the player including profile synchronizing means associated with the player for synchronizing content downloaded to player related to the profile of the user of the player.

The device has wrist sensors that measure body temperature, perspiration and pulse rate. It uses these measurements to build a profile of what music or video the owner plays when they are hot, cold, dry or sweaty, and when their pulse is racing or slow.

The device then comes up with suggestion to fit each and every profile, either using songs or videos in its library or downloading something new that should be suitable.

If the owner rejects the player's selection it learns and refines the profile. So, over time the player should get better and better at matching body measurements with the owner's moods.

The patent suggests that the device could display animated cartoons when the owner is particularly happy. Walt would surely be proud.

"E-Paper" - When will it be real?

2007-06-13T16:10:00.000+05:30

Source: E-computing

I read all kinds of magazines, newspapers, and books, all in paper format. I just can’t break away to an all electronic format. I sit in front of a computer most of the day and the last thing I want to do is sit down in my recliner and read from computer screens. I am a huge fan of digital media distribution but the medium for reading is still not there.

Recent announcements at the Society for Information Display conference in May start to give me some hope that someday soon we will see a medium that does a great job of emulating paper. I still like the convenience of paper. Something that I can take anywhere, rip out pages, and mark up text all without feeling like my eyeballs are going to get burned out as I read away. I will gladly give up the clutter of stacks of magazines and the environmental impact of paper if an electronic technology emerges that truly is better.

E Ink Corporation has teamed up with many display companies such as Sony and LG.Philips LCD to get some interesting electronic books on the market but they still lack key features. It will be great when someone invents a device that is no larger than a 64 page magazine, color, easy on the eyes, and wirelessly connected so that I can access and store all my subscriptions. I could mark up pages, earmark them, send copies to friends and associates, and bookmark them for later reference.

For now I’m going to keep my paper subscriptions, but I would love to see an electronic device that could replace them!

Edible RADIO (Digestible RFID)

2007-06-01T18:45:00.000+05:30

What is not possible ?! Do you want to know about "System to monitor the ingestion of medicines" ?

Inventors keep coming up with new ways to exploit RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags. The latest brainwave, from Kodak, is to use them to probe a person's digestive system.

This is a system for monitoring ingestion of medicine comprises forming a digestible radio frequency identification (RFID) tag. The RFID tag is attached to the medicine. The RFID tag and medicine are ingested. A signal from the RFID tag is monitored.

RFID tags are tiny radio chips that resonate with a single echo when hit with a radio trigger. Kodak’s digestible tags are harmless and intentionally fragile. The tags would be covered with soft gelatin that takes a while to dissolve in the stomach. After swallowing a tag a patient need only sit next to a radio source and receiver !!.

They stop working when exposed to gastric acid for a specific period of time, providing a subtle way to monitor a patient's digestive tract.

Kodak says that similar radio tags could also be embedded in an artificial knee or hip joint in such a way that they disintegrate as the joint does, warning of the need for more surgery. Attaching tags to ordinary pills could also help nurses confirm that a patient has really taken their medicine as ordered.

Smart DVD - X CD

2007-05-31T10:32:00.000+05:30

CDs and DVDs have been around for a while. Nevertheless, American-Israeli company Aladdin Knowledge System Ltd (AKSL) think it can breathe new life into these formats by creating a disc that combines optical storage capacity with an embedded electronic smart card chip.

The irregularly-shaped "XCD" is the thickness of a normal optical disc and can still play in any CD or DVD drive. But it also has a smart card, with its own memory and processing components, embedded in the plastic. The embedded chip is connected to a line of electrodes on the surface of one side of the disc. The outer edge of the disc is cut away so that the electrodes protrude and can plug straight into a USB socket.

But why bother inserting a chip into a DVD or CD in the first place? AKSL thinks it could provide a clever way to digitally lock content sold on optical discs. Music, video or data can be stored optically and read by computer's CD or DVD player, while encryption keys can be stored on the embedded chip and read by USB. The encryption keys could be used to lock information so that it can only be played having plugged the original disc in to the USB.

Abstract: How is it different ?
The present invention is directed to a CD comprising: electrical data storage; and electrical I/O means, for enabling accessing the electrical data storage by an external device. The electrical data storage may include a smart card memory, a magnetic stripe, a proximity card, and so forth. The electrical data storage may comprise a USB connector, a FireWire connector, and so forth. The connector may be adapted to be folded or detached, thereby enabling the CD to fit a wallet. The electrical storage means may store a key for decrypting at least some content of the optical storage means of the CD. The CD may further comprise circuitry, for rendering at least one function with a content of the electrical data storage, such as providing content to an external device, authentication, encryption or decryption, digital rights management, and security.

Hi

2007-05-30T20:05:00.001+05:30

Your comments are welcome about this site

SONY develops a Paper Thin TV

2007-05-29T13:42:00.000+05:30

The latest addition to man's eternal quest for the tiniest gadget is a paper-thin television with a display so slender that it bends.

In the race for ever-thinner displays for TVs, cell phones and other gadgets, Sony may have developed one to beat them all -- a razor-thin display that bends like paper while showing full-color video.

Sony Corp. released video of the new 2.5-inch display Friday. In it, a hand squeezes a display that is 0.3 millimeters, or 0.01 inch, thick. The display shows color images of a bicyclist stuntman and a picturesque lake.

Although flat-panel TVs are getting slimmer, a display that's so thin it bends in a human hand marks a breakthrough.

Sony said it has yet to decide on commercial products using the technology.

"In the future, it could get wrapped around a lamppost or a person's wrist, even worn as clothing," said Sony spokesman Chisato Kitsukawa.

"Perhaps it can be put up like wallpaper."

Tatsuo Mori, an engineering and computer science professor at Nagoya University, said some hurdles remained, including making the display bigger, ensuring durability and cutting costs.

But he said the display's pliancy is extremely difficult to imitate with liquid crystal displays and plasma display panels -- the two main display technologies now on the market.

"To come up with a flexible screen at that image quality is groundbreaking," Mori said. "You can drop it, and it won't break because it's as thin as paper."

The new display combines two technologies: Sony's organic thin film transistor, which is required to make flexible displays, and organic electroluminescent display.

Other companies, including LG. Philips LCD Co. and Seiko Epson Corp., are also working on a different kind of "electronic paper" technology, but Sony said the organic electroluminescent display delivers better color images and is more suited for video.

Microchip Jobs - Embedded & VLSI

2007-05-24T17:23:00.000+05:30

Jobs at Microchip Semiconductors, Bangalore.
Suitable canidates only can send their resumes to: hai_naveen@yahoo.com
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Pr. Applications Engineer (DSCD) - Req # - I127-07
Position Summary• The candidate will support key customer accounts by offering assistance on technical issues as they relate to PIC24H, dsPIC33F, and dsPIC30F Microchip products.
• Responsibilities include development of product collateral, software demonstrations, training, and customer application support.
Essential Function
• Work with customers to design and develop PIC24H, dsPIC33F, and dsPIC30F applications.
• Create application notes, getting started documents, and demonstration software that helps customer product development.
• Develop and present training material for Microchip Field Engineers and Microchip customers.
• Lead a technical team in developing key products and solutions.
• Travel to meet with customers, make technical presentations, and provide technical support.
Requirements
• The candidate should have a minimum B.E. in Electrical/Electronics Eng.
• Min 7 years of prior experience with C and assembly coding for 8, 16, or 32 bit microcontrollers is required.
• Prior work experience in the areas of Digital Signal Processing, Hardware design, Digital control systems, and secure network communication is highly desirable.

Sr. Applications Engineer (DSCD) - Req # - I128-07
Position Summary• The candidate will support existing and new products in the PIC24H, dsPIC30F and dsPIC33F 16-bit MCU product families in the area of Motor Control and/or Power Conversion applications.
• Responsibilities include development of product datasheets, application notes, software demonstrations, training, and customer application support via E-mail, website collateral, newsgroups and field-personnel support
Essential Function• Develop product datasheets and reference manuals from design specifications.
• Create application notes, getting started documents, and demonstration software that helps customer product development.
• Develop and present training material for Microchip Field Engineers and Microchip customers.
• Provide customer technical support for PIC24H, dsPIC30F and dsPIC33F products.
• Travel to meet with customers, make technical presentations, and provide technical support.
Requirements• The candidate should have a minimum B.E. in Electrical/Electronics Eng.
• Min 3 years of experience with C and assembly coding for 8, 16, or 32 bit microcontrollers is required.
• Prior work experience in the areas of motor control and/or power conversion applications is highly desirable.

Sr. Verification Engineer (DSCD) – Req # - I130-07
Requirements
• BSEE (MSEE preferred) with 5+ years experience Digital VLSI verification experience using an industry standard verification language (SystemVerilog, Specman, Vera, or SystemC)
• Experience with standard verification methods including black-box testing, white-box testing, functional coverage, constrained random and directed techniques.
• Experience developing bus functional models, transactors, monitors, checkers, etc.
• Good working knowledge of a typical design/verification flow. Solid background in a variety of programming/scripting languages a plus (C, C++, perl, tcl, assembly, etc.)
• Experience with OO based programming and design patterns a plus. VMM/AVM experience a plus. Microprocessor/Microcontroller verification experience a plus.

Design Engineer (DSCD) – Req # - I131-07
Pr. Design Engineer- India (DSCD) – Req # - I132-07
Requirements• BS/BE in Electronics required. MS/ME preferred.
• Experience in digital design & development using latest VLSI design -EDA tools required.
• Experience in RTL coding and Synthesis required.
• Design experience in sub-micron technologies is preferred.
• Must have around 2-3 years experience in CMOS IC design.

Sr/Pr Applications Engineer (AMAD) – Req # - I133-07
Pr Applications Engineer (AMAD) – Req # - I135-07
Sr/Pr Applications Engineer (AMAD) – Req # - I136-07

Requirements•
Degree in Electrical Engineering.
• 4+ years of knowledge and experience working on microcontroller based systems designs.
• Must have experience programming in assembly and C programming languages.
• Must also have analog & digital design and debugging experience.
• Desired to have microcontroller and related development tools experience, customer support experience and experience designing embedded systems.

Senior VLSI Design Engineer (AMAD) – Req # - I137-07
Requirements•
Candidate must have a minimum of 5 years experience working in a CMOS VLSI development capacity, preferably on products that incorporate microcontrollers for embedded control applications.
• Strong digital design skills and experience in verilog RTL coding for synthesis is essential. Experience with synopsys tools (design compiler, physical compiler, power compiler and primetime) and formal verification tools is highly desirable.
• The candidate must have a BSEE or equivalent, with an MSEE preferable.

Senior/Software Engineer (Dev Tools) – Req # - I141-07

Requirements• Expert knowledge of Visual Studio/Visual C++.
• Working knowledge of COM/ATL/MFC Windows programming.
• The successful candidate will be very familiar with modern integrated development environments, both in use and in development.
• The successful candidate will be able to use word processing, spreadsheet, database and integrated email applications to accomplish job objectives, with little or no assistance.
• Familiarity with microcontrollers, microcontroller designs and design concerns, and microcontroller-based products and applications is a plus.
• Development experience with real-time product design is a plus.
• Familiarity with simulators, simulation technologies and early silicon support is a plus. Familiarity with database design and application is a plus.
• The candidate must possess at least a bachelor's degree in Electronic Engineering, Computer and Systems Engineering, Software Engineering, Electronic Engineering Technology, a similar degree in a similar field, or at least ten years of practical development experience in the specific areas of software development described above.

Sr. Layout Design Engineer-India - Req # - I144-07

Requirements• BS/BE in Electronics required.
• Experience in microcontroller or other complex circuit layout development using full custom layout tools like Cadence Virtuoso is required.
• Experience in Full chip layout and handling stream out procedure is disirable.
• Experience in designing sub-micron technologies required.
• Familiarity with APR tools is a plus.
• 3 to 5 years of experience in physical design is required

Designing an FPGA to USB Interface

2007-05-23T18:39:00.000+05:30

By Blake Henry, Bitwise Systems
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1.Introduction
I’m going to give you the lowdown on how to interface an FPGA to USB. You know
that every solution has its strengths and its limitations. I’ll help you understand the strengths of FPGAs and the USB and also give you an idea of their limitations as well. Then, you decide for yourself if they’re a good fit for your project or not.

2.Faster than a Speeding Micro
One reason that an embedded designer would incorporate a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) into their design is because of the raw processing performance that FPGAs have to offer. FPGAs deliver user programmable wire-speed multiprocessing capability unequalled by any microcontroller.

In an FPGA, multiple wire-speed processes can be executed concurrently and exclusively by the FPGA. No task switching, threads or interrupts. FPGAs give you multiple digital circuits that operate in parallel with no interruptions at all. So at any point in time, an FPGA can concurrently read an ADC, update an LCD, write to a DAC, perform part of an FFT and drive a video display scan line by scan line all at the same time and never ever miss a
single clock cycle. That’s performance.

Since their arrival on the embedded scene as an ASIC replacement back in the late 1980s, FPGAs have grown in capability to such a degree that today they are a cost competitive and attractive alternative to microcontrollers for embedded systems
.
Today’s FPGAs boast the following:
• Low cost
• Low power
• Fast circuit speed
• Large on-chip memories
• Easy to use design software
• A large portfolio of customizable IP

3. So Why Aren’t FPGAs More Popular?
With all these great attributes, you might wonder why FPGAs don’t yet dominate the
embedded space. In my opinion, the key reason is that today’s FPGA design flow is
still a digital logic design process.

You can enter your design as schematics or you can use a Hardware Description
Language (HDL) such as VHDL or Verilog, but regardless of the design flow you choose, it’s still a hardware design process. You’re just moving around flip-flops in a sea of gates. All the disciplines required to design digital logic are still required to design for FPGAs.

In my view, as long as these conditions persist, FPGA based embedded designs will
largely remain limited to those which demand the performance that FPGAs can
deliver and can afford an FPGA design specialist on the project.

4. The Universal Serial Bus (USB)
You probably have one of those cool USB flash drives and everyone uses USB to sync their iPod or MP3 player with the PC, so you know how easy it is to use USB. That’s the big sell. And it’s not just hype.

Every PC manufactured has at least one USB port and all the operating systems support USB because it’s the de-facto standard PC peripheral interface. USB is a well engineered and implemented interface that provides adequate performance and a consistent user experience.

What you may not be aware of is that implementing a USB peripheral is not trivial.
Some have described the process as just plain hard work. The convenience and
performance that the user enjoys was paid for behind the scenes by hard working
engineers. As far as serial ports go, USB is a complex bus with lots of
implementation details that just have to be perfect.

Here’s the technical overview: The USB is a host/device (i.e. master/slave) bus. All USB transactions are initiated by the host; a device cannot interrupt the host. The USB requires devices to identify themselves to the host and provide the information necessary to properly configure, power and operate the device. Each device type is required to be uniquely identifiable so that the proper drivers can be loaded tocommunicate with it.

The USB can run at up to three speeds, low speed (1.5 Mbps), full speed (12 Mbps)
and Hi-Speed (480 Mbps).

There are four types of USB transfers: control, interrupt,bulk and isochronous. Today, a Hi-speed USB 2.0 devices can transfer reliable (CRC-
16 checked) data at a maximum theoretical rate of 54 MB/sec over a bulk pipe,
however that transfer rate is not guaranteed. In practice, the transfer rate will be
between 20-30 MB/sec. Data is transferred with guaranteed latency via an isochronous pipe, but is not retransmitted on a CRC failure.

Because the USB is a packet oriented bus and it’s most common implementation is on a non-real time operating system, the bus is subject to inter-packet delays which are manifested at the system level as variable transfer latency. Therefore USB streaming applications typically require a latency buffer. In addition, if the host application software uses data transfer worker threads utilizing asynchronous driver calls to minimize OS generated delays, the latency buffer depth can be minimized.

So in summary, USB is complex to implement and some special care must be taken
for transfer rate critical applications to avoid data loss.

Now for the good news: Thanks to the USB-IF and a wealth of other resources, the
USB is very well documented and supported. ‘USB Complete’ by Jan Axelson is a very useful book that explains all the technical details of implementing a USB device.

There are a number of very good USB device chips available. You can also file lots of USB resources on the web like free IP cores, USB development kits and USB modules
that you can design right into your board.

5. The FPGA + USB Killer Application
With the advent of inexpensive, ubiquitous PCs with Hi-Speed USB ports, powerful
FPGAs and a plethora of sensors and data converters, a new trend in embedded
system design has emerged. This trend is to create what I might characterize as
‘hybrid’ embedded/PC-based systems that combine a sensor or converter with an
FPGA and a USB interface to form a USB device. The USB device is then coupled with
PC software to form an instrument that can often duplicate or exceed the
performance of a ‘pure’ embedded system costing many times more.
Some common examples of systems like this are the popular USB logic analyzers and oscilloscopes and USB Cameras.

Some devices can be integrated with COTS modeling packages like MatLab. This capability allows the user to acquire real world data from the USB device directly into the analysis software for immediate analysis without writing a custom software
application.

Indian semiconductor industry

2007-05-22T11:20:00.000+05:30

The Indian semiconductor industry began in 1962 with Bharat Electronics, a Government of India owned unit, starting production of discrete germanium semiconductors. Continental Devices India Ltd. was another company which started discrete semiconductors production at the same time.

In 1983, Semiconductor complex ltd. was set up under the Government of India in Chandigarh, to manufacture ICs for the telecom and industrial sector. They started commercial production with 5 micron CMOS technology in technical collaboration with American Microsystems Inc in 1984. The turning point in the Indian semiconductor industry came with Texas Instruments (TI) opening an office in India in 1985 to carry out design work for its operations abroad. It was the first multinational to set up design operations in India.

The major inflow of companies occurred only later in the 90's, when companies such as Analog Devices, National Instruments, ST Microelectronics and IBM came to India. The Mid 90's saw fully designed semiconductor products coming out of Indian development centers. 2000 onwards, other players in the semiconductor eco system, particularly Electronic Design Automation (EDA) companies along with some Indian chip designing companies, such as such as Arcus Technology Pvt Ltd, Centillium Communications, CG Core EL, etc. started opening their development centers in India.

With local companies providing backend design services to large global companies, India emerged as a BPO center for chip designing at the beginning of the 21st century. Many multinationals that were carrying out small operations in India turned towards developing and designing cutting edge technology devices in Indian development centers. Intel, which conducted the development processes of its Itanium and Xeon processers in Bengaluru, is one such example. Today, all the global top 10 fabless design companies have India operations and 19 of the top 25 semiconductors companies have operations in India. Bengaluru, Delhi, Noida, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Ahmadabad and Goa are the main hubs for the Indian semiconductor design industry.

India is a global leader in IC design and Embedded Software Development, providing all semiconductor related services except fabrication. Companies in India mostly cater to international demand but there is a trend towards building to address domestic requirements. Until recently, India was restricted to only design services in the IC market, with the exception of the government owned Semiconductor Complex ltd., but is now preparing to start full fledged foundry services under multinational brand names.

iRobot' SUGV

2007-05-22T11:00:00.000+05:30

iRobot Corp. and The Boeing Company announced they have signed a teaming agreement to develop and deliver a new, next-generation Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (SUGV) to military, civil and commercial users. Weighing less than 30 pounds, the robot, named SUGV Early, will enable users to remotely conduct reconnaissance and secure real-time intelligence while remaining out of harm's way. The companies will use Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) technology to the greatest extent possible to rapidly produce and deploy the new robot, which is expected to be in production and ready for delivery in 2008.

The SUGV Early will be a smaller, lighter version of the combat-proven iRobot PackBot(R), which is used daily in Iraq and Afghanistan to safely disarm Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and search buildings, caves and tunnels for hostile forces. The SUGV Early's smaller size and advanced capabilities will allow life-saving robotic technology to be used by a far broader group of users than the current PackBot.

"The SUGV Early is light enough to be carried long distances and easy enough to operate so that we believe it could become a standard tool for infantry squads and SWAT teams," said Vice Admiral Joe Dyer (U.S. Navy, Ret.), president of iRobot Government & Industrial Robots. "By teaming with Boeing, we can leverage their system-of-system capabilities and global marketing strength to quickly get these life-saving robots into the hands of our troops, first responders and allies worldwide."

Boeing and iRobot will jointly market the new SUGV Early robot. Boeing will also contribute expertise in systems integration, large-volume production and global marketing, while iRobot will design, develop and manufacture the robot using its proven experience with the iRobot PackBot and its development work on the U.S. Army's Future Combat Systems program.

To date, more than 900 iRobot PackBot robots have been delivered to a broad range of military and civilian customers worldwide. The robots have performed tens of thousands of missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and are credited with saving soldiers' lives.

Benz Car “Command APS”

2007-05-21T17:15:00.000+05:30

Passionate to know latest tech news on Cars/Navigation ! Read this....

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The 2007 Mercedes-Benz C-Class leverages Nuance speech solutions to provide drivers with new levels of safety and convenience when using the car’s audio, navigation and communication systems.

The car’s new in-vehicle control system, called “Command APS” by Mercedes-Benz, enables drivers to use their voice to select contacts from their phone address book, select music, or input addresses to the navigation system. DaimlerChrysler presented the in-vehicle navigation application and the voice-activated user interface as an option in the new C-Class at the Geneva Car Show 2007.

The new speech features of Command APS make it faster and easier to interact with a car’s audio, navigation and telecommunication systems. With Command APS, drivers can place calls by voice, listen to their text messages, control the audio systems and enter the destination for their navigation system by voice. Powered by Nuance VoCon, the embedded speech recognition software, the system allows the driver to control in-car functions in a natural and intuitive way. In addition, Nuance’s RealSpeak text-to-speech software is used to convert text into speech for readout of incoming text messages or turn-by-turn directions.

Drivers can formulate speech commands in many different ways without the need to use a small set of precise commands or to follow a multi-layer menu structure. For example, drivers can say, “Call Peter Miller” to initiate a phone call, eliminating the multiple voice commands required by previous speech systems. Drivers may also say, “Radio station WDR2,” to tune to a specific radio station without ever setting voice tags for specific channels. Command APS is “fluent” in US and UK-English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Dutch, so drivers can select a language on-the-fly.

“As traffic volumes continue to increase, and car infotainment and communication systems become more sophisticated, speech technology provides the safest – and most convenient – interface to a car’s audio, navigation and communication systems,” says Craig Peddie, vice president and general manager, embedded speech, Nuance. “The Mercedes-Benz C-Class is one of the most comprehensive installations of voice features we have seen to date. The new model features a navigation device that allows drivers to enter their destination verbally — one of the most important features to increase safety and improve overall experience with a navigation system.”

Specific features of Command APS powered by Nuance speech solutions include:

Voice-activated destination entry: Drivers can simply say their destination address instead of having to type it on a touch-screen keypad. The voice interface reads out all information including street names and traffic information. The US system even allows users to enter the street name first, which means that in a state like California, it has over 200,000 street names in its active vocabulary.

Voice-activated, hands-free calling: Drivers can simply press the “Push to Talk” button on the steering wheel, and then say the name of the person to call. The system will automatically connect with the names in the mobile phone’s contact list without any pre-enrollment of the names required.

Audible text messages: The system converts text messages received on the handset to audio and reads them out loud. The system is sophisticated enough to translate commonly used text messaging expressions such as “LOL.”

Voice-activated music: With command and control of the audio and video system, a radio station can be selected by voice, both speaking the number of the frequency in natural numbers or by saying the name of the radio station. In addition it is also possible to select a track on the CD by simply saying, “Play Track 5.”
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Microprocessors and DSPs

2007-05-19T10:06:00.000+05:30

Nice Info on Processors and DSPs.
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Multi-core processor design needs graphical approach
by Ian Bell, National Instruments Friday 18 May 2007

Multi-core processors are now a reality which embedded system developers must face. Many embedded developers are beginning to realise the shortcomings of traditional development approaches when faced with multi-core architectures.

A key step in tackling a multi-core design is developing a clear software design methodology. Two critical components of this methodology are the software tool flow and the real-time operating system.

Software tool flow, starting with algorithm development, continuing through software prototype, and on to final deployment, is a critical component due to the programming complexity involved in a multi-core design.

In addition to the thread-handling and priority-scheduling that a real-time operating system (RTOS) delivers on any platform, the RTOS also manages the hardware abstraction layer.When dealing with embedded systems, it is no secret that the lines of code quickly increase, as the overall complexity of the application escalates.

The introduction of multi-core processors adds yet further to programming overhead.A method to abstract the complexity of programming embedded systems - both in single processor and multi-core designs - is to choose a software tool flow based on a graphical approach.The advantage of this methodology is that many graphical-based tools include native functionality to handle complex programming and timing. This means the embedded developer can focus on the critical pieces of code, such as the application itself, rather than the low-level details.For an example of how a graphical approach can abstract programming complexity, see the diagram (right).

This LabVIEW application uses two loop structures which contain a filter task and an FFT task running in parallel. Using LabVIEW loops in this manner divides an application into independent threads, with user-defined priorities and execution rates.

In a multi-core design, these threads are handed-off from LabVIEW to the OS, which takes care of the load balancing between multiple processors.Graphical system design is an approach that takes advantage of graphical programming in the context of embedded design. This approach consists of three main stages: design; prototype; and deploy. DesignThe first stage is to design the primary IP of the application in the form of algorithms and functionality used to describe the system.

There are various high-level views to design the IP. For example, an engineer could describe control tasks using a model-based view, digital signal processing tasks using data flow, and mathematical formulae textually. NI LabVIEW accommodates these different views by including text-based math, continuous time simulation, state diagrams and graphical dataflow models all within the same development environment.

Prototype, The next stage in the graphical system design process is to prototype. In this case, the term prototype does not refer to an early iteration of the final custom embedded design. Rather, this stage refers to a functional, yet experimental prototype. The process consists of taking the code created in the design stage, and verifying that design in a real-world environment using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) processors and I/O modules.

A developer who designs a VI that has multiple simultaneous execution paths can instantly see increased computing power and shorter data processing times, without the need for any special coding or design techniques.

The combination of graphical programming with the right RTOS ensures that developers can immediately scale their projects from single CPU targets to multi-core targets without any design changes.

Some FUTURE Mobile Phone Models

2007-05-18T16:42:00.000+05:30

Want to buy a mobile phone !! But not happy with the current models. Just wait for some more days ! Lots of mobiles with very new design are going to be available.

Have a look :-)

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