Altia proudly announces our collaboration with the Institute for Automotive Engineering of RWTH Aachen University. The Aachen team is using Altia’s graphical user interface software for the development and deployment of a remote interaction automotive cockpit concept with an A-pillar-to-A-pillar screen.

Cockpit screens are increasing in size from generation to generation. As this evolution takes place, new concepts—like the black background head-up display featured by Continental Automotive at IAA Mobility 2023—are moving the automotive display surfaces further away from the driver and passenger. To interact with the growing displays the Aachen researchers hypothesize that an alternative to direct touch, which is currently the main interaction modality in today’s vehicles, is required for future vehicle concepts. This will be especially true for autonomous vehicles according to SAE L4, at which level the vehicle takes over responsibility and the human can turn to entertaining and distracting functions. The research team therefore is investigating remote interaction as one promising solution for automotive displays of the future.

This project, led by Research Associates Thomas Lennartz, Tobias Oetermann and Lena Wirtz, aims to develop an optimal remote interaction concept. To do so, the team is taking a close look at the drivers in their study, attempting to answer these questions.

  • How distracting is their remote interaction concept?
  • Is their remote interaction model intuitive or does it require driver and passenger training?
  • What alternatives would drivers and passengers prefer for a remote interaction concept?

Altia’s HMI development software enables the RWTH Aachen University research team to apply a human-centered design process for developing their HMI concepts—and do so with advanced graphics capabilities. To this end, a project designed in rapid prototyping software was translated into Altia Design and deployed to target hardware. Altia’s model-based development process gives developers the capability to create user interfaces with assets from popular graphics software packages, perform user testing with their GUIs then quickly tweak to achieve a user experience that is safe, simple and user-focused.

“The Institute for Automotive Engineering of RWTH Aachen University is one of Europe’s leading automotive engineering institutions—collaborating with leading automotive companies and research institutes, such as BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen, Bosch, Fraunhofer and others. This is the university that graduates the men and women who will lead innovation at German automotive OEMs for years to come,” stated Armin Koelker, Altia Europe GmbH Sales Director EMEA. “Altia is proud to contribute our technology to this important research, while offering experience with our software for future German automotive innovators.”

“The RWTH Aachen University research team came up to speed quickly and achieved an impressive fully integrated cockpit in a short time. This speaks to the user-friendliness of Altia’s GUI development software and the genius of the members of the research team,” praised Philipp Michel, Senior Solutions Architect for Altia Europe GmbH. “We are honored and excited to continue to collaborate with them.”

About Altia

Altia is a software company that provides graphical user interface design and development tools that can be used from concept to final product code. Our GUI editor, Altia Design, offers development teams the capability to implement a model-based development process for clear communication and accelerated user interface development. Our code generator, Altia DeepScreen, supports a vast range of low- to high-powered processors from a variety of industry-leading silicon providers. Altia generates pure C source code that is optimized to take full advantage of hardware resources. Graphics code generated by Altia is driving millions of displays worldwide – from automotive instrument clusters, HUDs and radios to thermostats, washing machines and healthcare monitors. Our mission is to get the best automotivemedical and consumer interfaces into production in the shortest time on the lowest cost hardware.

Altia was founded in 1991. Its customers include automotive OEMs and Tier 1s like Continental Automotive, Denso, Stellantis, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Honda, Renault, Magneti Marelli, Nippon Seiki, Valeo, Visteon and more – plus leading consumer device manufacturers like Electrolux, Whirlpool, NordicTrack and many others.

For more information about Altia, visit www.altia.com or email [email protected].

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