Dubai: Touch screens have been around for a long period of time. In fact, some of the first navigation systems available in cars offered touch screen inputs back in the 1990s.
However, with the amplified growth of touch screen smartphones and tablets, sales of vehicles with touch screen interfaces will grow from 16.7 million units in 2015 to more than 61 million units in 2021.
A recent IHS Automotive analysis of user interfaces in future automotive infotainment systems finds increased global commonality and complexity.
Technologies and features developed by automakers and suppliers have heavily focused on designing interfaces that users can understand quickly and operate efficiently. The multi-modal interface concept is a major growth driver in building new and innovative HMI (human-machine interface) platforms.
Mark Boyadjis, senior analyst and manager for infotainment and HMI at IHS Automotive, said that the concept is simple. All interactions with a device should be fully accessible by all available input technologies and via all available output technologies.
This concept is driving growth for all types of automotive HMI technologies across regions, brands and vehicle segments — through innovation and attention to usability.
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Several automotive HMI technologies are forecasted to have 20 per cent or greater compound annual growth rates on global sales. The technologies include touch screens, touchpads, head-up displays, haptic feedback, proximity sensing and gesture recognition.
“Most of these technologies have such significant compound annual growth rates for two reasons — first, they are relatively new to the automotive industry,” Boyadjis said.
He said that they also provide unique and valuable usability characteristics that make driving and operating infotainment systems easier on consumers.
Meanwhile, centre stack display systems are forecasted to surpass 54 million unit sales in 2018, according to IHS, while an increasing number of vehicles will have two or more unique displays in their centre stack — for infotainment, HVAC, rear cameras, vehicle diagnostics and more.
Sales will reach all-time highs, as emerging markets like Brazil, China and Eastern Europe sell more vehicles with supporting local languages. In addition, while overall sales of vehicles with speech recognition grow, an increasing amount of the speech recognition technology in cars will be located in the cloud.
“We estimate that about 50 per cent of all vehicles with speech recognition globally also will offer off-board speech recognition in 2021. Automotive user Interfaces have considerable growth prospects as automakers work to deploy solutions to meet the expectations of their buyers, while keeping them focused on the road at the same time,” he said.
He said that suppliers are well positioned to profit from this trend and build on industry momentum.
