Car Radio and Wearables: The Next Thing

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Google Glass Harman

The next great gadget we will connect to our car radios, just as we do our smartphones, will be smart glasses (like Google Glass) and smart watches.

In fact, more than 90 percent of autos will be able to work with wearable gadgets within 5 years, said a new research from ABI Research.

The easy, cheap connection is too irresistible.  Google Glass becomes your heads up display; and your smart watch can remote start and lock/unlock your car.

Google Glass are glasses with a built-in computer and camera so its already essentially a digital video recorder with a handy display. It can be the monitor and the engine for navigation, or for blind spot detection or a backup camera.  It can track your eye movement to make sure you are awake—a feature now found on only high end luxury cars.

Where smartphones added some key attributes, starting with music and Internet to a car audio system, Google Glass adds more.  You get a screen more suited to use while driving, plus a built in camera aimed at the road.

But there’s a major hurdle. About 7  U.S. states as well as the U.K. have proposed legislation to ban smart glasses in the car. ABI research analyst Dominique Bonte, says it would be smarter to legislate against certain uses of the glasses, like watching movies, rather than the technology itself, just as we limit the use of video screens in the dashboard.

A half dozen car makers have already demonstrated prototype car  systems that link to smart glasses or watches.

Bonte says smart watches and glasses will become very popular over the next two years,  and the car market’s integration of them will happen rapidly.

“It’s one of the trends picking up very quickly.  The reason is for both the watch and eye gear we are already using them, so to add technology to them is a natural fit.  If you have glasses, why not wear smart glasses?”

Similarly, they will allow cheap integration of very advanced technology in the car (like the eye tracking systems to keep you awake).  And they will allow constantly updated technology to link to the car.

“The automotive industry is nervous about it because they want to sell expensive options and legislators are nervous, but I don’t see a difference between a heads up display and Google Glass except there has to be a mechanism to limit the types of apps you use if the car is in motion,” Bonte added.

Some of the companies showing prototype car uses for wearables (including some at the recent CES) include Harman’s ADAS Google Glass integration, Hyundai’s Blue Link Glassware application, Mercedes’ Pebble smart watch Digital DriveStyle application, BMW’s i3 EV Samsung Galaxy Gear smart watch integration, Nissan’s Nismo concept smart watch displaying biometric and vehicle diagnostics and performance data, and INRIX’s real-time traffic Google Glass demo app.

Another study by Canalys found that  shipments of “smart bands” (smart wrist devices that can run apps) will pass 8 million this year and then triple to 23 million next year, reaching 45 million by 2017.  By contrast 1 billion smartphones shipped last year worldwide.

Source: CEoutlook

Photo via Car and Driver: Harman demos Google Glass app at CES

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