An embedded architectural framework for interaction between automobiles and consumer devices

The last two and one half decades have seen rapid growth in the amount and importance of software in automobiles. This growth is bringing about a shift from treating software as a part of the hardware it controls to viewing it as an implementation of a set of services that mediate between the hardware and the functionality seen by the user. This paper describes an in-vehicle computing platform based on the software service platform to provide entertainment and information functions that has been implemented in two prototype vehicles at Ford Motor Company.