F2008-02-006
The Machines Come from the Digital Planet but the Customers Are from the Analog One - An Elegant and Efficient Approach to Address the Legal Aspect of the Product Security
Paper 2
"The machines come from the Digital planet but the customers are from the Analog one" An elegant and efficient approach to address the legal aspect of the product security
This paper is a proposal for a more robust and efficient way to deal with the security of the product, a crucial point for the OEMs. One must accept that MMi are deeply involved in the perception that the user has of its own security (as well as its responsibility) in case of a disorder. But it must also be clear that he will strongly look for involving the machine trough the MMI, and by the way attack the manufacturer for enormous indemnities. In our digital world, people who used to built cars from steel pieces are now involved (since year 2001) into silicium-cars. More and more sensors are put into the car body. They are connected through high speed data bus. As physical parameters are continuous, their digitization introduces a perturbation which culminates when displayed on a screen. It is fascinating to see how we trust a digital value ! It seems so real, it projects so much self-confidence that you cannot deny its reality. This is because the digital world is very poor, unable to transmit the intersystem values or the side effects, as well as the rapid increase and decrease of a value. It suffers a great lack of harmonics. Digitization is used because computers can only deal with it. That's all. But, what about the human beings : the customer and the user ? He is analog ! He successfully deal with multi-parameters analysis, he logs data during months, being able to smooth slow drifts as well as to detect noticeable changes. With a digital MMI, we ignore this extraordinary capacity and rely only onto the machine, those 50 $ embedded computers... When they read "service in 3000 km", a lot of people will be disconcerted by a failure at 1000 km. Now, who knows the behavior of a car by 2000 km ? Specially with our high performance vehicles, optimized for security, environment and consumption ? And now what about if I replace these digits by an indicator with an arrow pointing close to a service mark ? If an OEM produces an analog display which has been designed cleverly to keep alive the most important physical parameters, it can make use of the powerful capacities of the user to detect incoming anomalies and to endorse the responsibility of what to do. In term of guaranty costs, the limits of an alarm signal can be decreased which means less parts replacements for the OEM and less garage returns for the user. That means more availability, which is what we all want. Not all alarms can be moved from a digital MMI to an analog one. Those who are not specialists and are not close to the physics, don't appreciate to monitor analog signals. The adequate solution is an hybrid one where some of the reality of the car environment can be perceived by the user as a reassurance and not a workload. Addressing the right brain of the customer by a well-balanced use of some analog signals through the MMI, is a promising approach which can save a lot of money within the OEM.
Session: MMI - Tasks and Assistance