Car Navigation System with Enhanced Connecting Function
Contents
1. Enhancement of dedicated on board content e Entertainment elements by employing an ani mated character on the UI 2 2 System configuration Figure 1 depicts the system configuration The service is delivered by dividing processes among the Smartphone on board system and the service center The Ul designs including the character and menu rendering are executed in the smartphone The on board system transmits the voice data from a mi crophone to the smartphone plays the talk back voice data returned from the smartphone and executes the navigation to the destination The rest of the speech recognition function is undertaken by the installed Voice recognition Voice text NANG mum Find mea nearby lp convenience store Query comprehension Find me a nearby Eclipse Nishi Shinjuku convenience store 1 chome store Convenience store information Speech synthesis text Voice Eclipse Nishi Shinjuku 1 chome store Ue System configuration of the conversational speech agent FUJITSU Sci Tech J Vol 51 No 4 October 2015 61 T Sawada Car Navigation System with Enhanced Connecting Function application app for the processing on the center side 1 The app on smartphone The app on the smartphone analyzes the speech data streamed from the on board system via the Wi Fi connection and automatically determines the end of the speech Subsequently the extracted speech data are sent to the service center2. Enhanced Connecting Function its touch panel The screen displays the content as it would appear if the user followed given procedures thereby creating a secondary effect of operational instructions for users who are not familiar with the on board system operation As on board systems become equipped with more and more connectivity features the utility will be en hanced but at a cost of making the device operation more complicated In order to make the connected functions user friendly to all including those who are new to the system we will continue our diligent efforts to develop user friendly Uls and functions for opera tional assistance 4 Fujitsu My Cloud connectivity service The MirrorLink is the standards for connectivity between smartphones and on board systems allow ing users to transfer the smartphone display onto the on vehicle display panel and operate the smartphone contents through the vehicles touch panel The stan dards are endorsed by the Car Connectivity Consortium CCC and FUJITSU TEN is part of the initiative We thus installed MirrorLink on Fujitsu s ARROWS Smartphones and FUJITSU TEN s ECLIPSE CNS and de veloped a system that allowed drivers to access Fujitsu s Btrapr ato cae BS 9 vs7Sr SEER Exe t 31 Es STSTHSEROTIET E Bilki METETE T E ar EE TyF u EPEA Z J fe t H i re EF Cs cloud service My Cloud and other apps even while driving Figur
3. Port FUJITSU Sci Tech J Vol 51 No 4 October 2015 T Sawada Car Navigation System with Enhanced Connecting Function planning phase which enabled them to realize the service that differentiated itself through leveraging the best of both companies We will continue making our contributions to the planning and development of new products and services that build on what we have achieved this time 5 Automatic map update Customers often give us feedback on pre installed maps and facility information saying that maps and facility information that they are not up to date so they had to take a longer route and map update is complicated or expensive The SZ Series launched in November 2014 is equipped with a connectivity unit and it has been made possible to always get the lat est map every month for navigation without having to undergo complex updating procedures The connectiv ity unit on the CNS compares the built in map and the latest map stored on the service center once a month and it automatically downloads the information on new roads difference update The downloaded data will be written into the map SD card of the on board system automatically when the vehicle s accessory power is turned off completing the update procedures The scope of the map to be updated includes informa tion on all roads in Japan expressways national roads prefectural roads and others 6 Conclusion We envisage that future on
4. whereby the data are divided into small packets to improve the overall pro cessing performance The Ul design Figure 2 employs a human like character which reproduces realistic motion according to the talk back content by means of a 3D motion en gine We opted to have a human like character so that users would feel more relaxed about speaking to the system Other ideas to appeal to a more diverse range of users include having different wardrobe items for the character which are made available to users according to the season or the frequency of their use and some entertainment factors such as special UI designs for destination locations obtainable only when the user visits the location prefecture 2 Noise reduction The speech data captured via the app on the Smartphone is transmitted to the dedicated server for FUJITSU TEN and undergoes a process to reduce typical in vehicle noises There are noises emanating from the engine road surface air conditioner blowers and other factors constituting a major hindrance to voice recog nition We have therefore developed a unique noise reduction algorithm that works in an environment where there is low signal to noise ratio or one with non stationary noises We applied the algorithm to an app installed at FUJITSU TEN s dedicated center and repeated tests in an actual in travel environment to im prove the performance As a result we have achieved an average improvement of 20 dB in the
5. Car Navigation System with Enhanced Connecting Function Teru Sawada In November 2013 FUJITSU TEN released three models of Z Series as new products of ECLIPSE car navigation systems and they were the first commercially available models with Wi Fi com munication They offer the following services a voice interactive destination search service push type agent application software through which information on the surrounding facilities is given to the driver in speech form and a new service that allows the driver to remotely oper ate a car navigation system from an electronic user manual application on a smartphone In conjunction with the My Cloud service provided by Fujitsu these products also come with ap plication software that lets users retrieve and enjoy pictures and music saved on their home PC via the Internet In November 2014 three further models were released as the SZ Series and they came with a feature to automatically update the map data and facility information installed on the system This paper gives an overview of these services and their features and describes the future challenges in their development 1 Introduction Since the successful commercialization of a con nected car audio system in June 2003 FUJITSU TEN has been launching network connected on board equip ment mainly in its ECLIPSE series of car navigation systems hereafter CNS The recent smartphone market has been led by two major players iPhone
6. atest maps and facility information This paper describes the development and out lines of each of these four services CarafL Dokodemo Support Drive Studio and automatic map update to gether with the future challenges in their development 2 Conversational speech recognition agent On board user interfaces Uls must conform to a safety design to limit drivers operation of the sys tem while travelling For this reason many functions are available only when the vehicle is stationary At the beginning of the 1990s some CNSs incorporated FUJITSU Sci Tech J Vol 51 No 4 pp 60 66 October 2015 Speech recognition functionality for controlling the on board system to increase the availability of such functions However the forerunners of speech recog nition features could only respond to certain specific commands or sound sets and the recognition accuracy was poor leaving much room for improvement in prac tical applications Apple Inc started a voice recognition service called Siri in October 2011 which heralded a global trend for voice recognition enabled in vehicle functions owing to its highly accurate speech recognition coupled with a rich vocabulary base to capture even conversa tional speech forms correctly Soon Google Inc and others followed suit starting to offer their own voice recognition services for mobile devices Concurrently manufacturers of in vehicle devices worked to enhance Smartphone compatibi
7. board systems will be further differentiated by connectivity as navigation functions are more commodified In particular there J ENT SONGS ARTISTS ALBUMS HISTORIES SPECIAL OTHERS SPECIAL OTHERS amp FFFA TA SPECIAL OTHERS amp 4 FLAA SPECIAL OTHERS amp kj SPECIAL OTHERS amp MAREWREW Note There is no English version of this app As a reference the Japanese version is shown here Figure 6 Drive Studio 65 T Sawada Car Navigation System with Enhanced Connecting Function will be fierce competition in the areas of connectivity to ever evolving smartphones and inclusion of cloud based services where all companies are trying their hardest to differentiate their products and services In this climate Fujitsu Group is the only player that is able to mobilize its concerted strength to pursue global promotion of a cloud enabled on board system with its Teru Sawada FUJITSU TEN LIMITED Mr Sawada currently engages in the plan ning of on board products and services 66 expertise and own products in all three areas of home appliances mobile devices and vehicle equipment We will continue our proactive pursuit for products and services that seamlessly enhance our customers in vehicle experiences in concerted efforts of our group companies FUJITSU Sci Tech J Vol 51 No 4 October 2015
8. ce of a speech synthesis engine is evaluated in terms of accurate vocal reproduction of sentences that have a combination of kanji and kana phrases ac curacy level However the accuracy level deteriorates unless the latest terms that keep being generated on a daily basis are added to the database In particular it is often difficult to decipher the sounds of brand names included in facility information Therefore there is a need to develop an operational maintenance system to FUJITSU Sci Tech J Vol 51 No 4 October 2015 T Sawada Car Navigation System with Enhanced Connecting Function regularly update the database with the latest content We adopted the cloud service by Animo Limited for the speech synthesis feature As of May 2015 many on board system manu facturers around the world are launching their voice engine agent services At FUJITSU TEN we have been exceeding our competitors in that our services are based on conversational speech recognition and offer unique entertainment value through a human like Ul character We will enhance these differentiating aspects further in the future and keep developing the services to always be a step ahead of the rivals 3 Electronic user manual app with on board system control function FUJITSU TEN has been working to convert manu als packaged with its CNS products into an electronic form The AVN Z Series launched in November 2013 was equipped with a new electronic us
9. e 4 The on board system and smartphone are con nected via a USB interface and communicate using the MirrorLink 1 0 standards While a server function is installed on the smartphone on board systems are equipped with the MirrorLink client function and we have also developed a dedicated application launcher for MirrorLink Drive Port Figure 5 to automatically Start up the apps when the devices are connected Since the Drive Port presupposes the utilization in a car FUJITSU TEN undertook the development and Fujitsu Photos Music My Cloud t Display and control t MirrorLink server Sa MirrorLink client On board machine ARROWS smartphone FUJITSU TEN Fujitsu Figure 4 System configuration of My Cloud connectivity service Electronic user manual display Button for on board machine control Electronic user manual display Function to control on board machine Note There is no English version of this app As a reference the Japanese version is shown here Figure 3 Smartphone screen display of the electronic user manual 64 FUJITSU Sci Tech J Vol 51 No 4 October 2015 worked to have it introduced in ARROWS 1 Drive Port Drive Port is a program dedicated for MirrorLink enabled devices respective models of ARROWS and ECLIPSE to automatically launch the program when these devices are connected in MirrorLink mode The initial menu has th
10. er manual with a function to directly control the interface of on board system The most frequently asked customer inquiries made to FUJITSU TEN s call center are about how to use the purchased products and about their functions The functions that are embedded deeply in the function tree cannot be easily located and therefore custom ers are more likely to inquire about them To address this problem we provide a user manual app to be installed on smartphones and it helps customers to find what they want to know not only by the function names but also by query keywords We added to this app a function to automatically switch the screen on the navigation device via the Wi Fi connection This enables even a novice user with little understanding of the device operation to easily find the content they are looking for Figure 3 Installing this function on an on board system requires a special interface that makes it possible to externally control state transition Fortunately FUJITSU TEN s on board systems are equipped with a dedicated interface for automated external control of state tran sition provided for the purpose of in line testing We managed to economize on the software development cost by adapting this mechanism to the developed function instead of freezing it up before shipping The software simulates the events taking place on the on board system as if the device is operated through 63 T Sawada Car Navigation System with
11. lity fast adapting the voice rec ognition technology thus developed for mobile devices to their on board Uls FUJITSU TEN was no exception and as part of mobile connectivity one of the com pany s fortes we started development in preparation for the launch of a Japanese model with a device ap plication for conversational voice recognition agent in early 2013 2 1 Outline of the services For this service we focused on the destination search function which is one of the features of CNS that are the most suitable cases for adopting voice Find me a nearby convenience store _ Inavehicle Eclipse Nishi Shinjuku 1 chome store is 5km away Figure 1 FUJITSU TEN Service center Noise removal T Sawada Car Navigation System with Enhanced Connecting Function recognition Users only need to speak their desired destination in a way as they would in a normal con versation Then the system will pick up the voice understand the users intention search for the des tination location generate response sentences and speech synthesize the query results Taking into ac count the already existing mobile services and trends in our rivals developments at FUJITSU TEN we pursued the following to differentiate our services e The entire process from destination search to set ting the destination into the navigation system can be operated by speech e Speech based query filtering e Push style comments in speech
12. o understand the user s query in an overall context of the conversation rather than each distinc tive utterance and provides the information relevant to the users request as closely as possible even from an ambiguous piece of speech The query comprehension engine cannot respond to a user request without having appropriate cat egory databases corresponding to the query category Knowing that speech recognition is most frequently used for a destination search in this case of CNS we can specify the query category database to be the Point of Interest POI DB Therefore FUJITSU TEN focuses on the POI deployment e g real time parking informa tion convenience stores with a toilet as it is most likely to be needed during a car journey and differenti ates its products on this point We adopted the cloud service provided by iNAGO Inc for the query compre hension feature 5 Speech synthesis The results from the query comprehension infer ence and search must be fed back to the user and to do this the information is converted into letters and passed on to the speech synthesis This engine converts the string data into voice sound data This is also a crucial element in that however accurate the voice recogni tion processes are in the initial comprehension phase a flat robotic voice or speech with an awkward accent would seriously spoil the ultimate user satisfaction In voice recognition for the Japanese language performan
13. ree options Photo Music and New Apps The Photo and Music options will initiate the cli ent application Drive Studio a dedicated program for My Cloud service by Fujitsu to access files on the server The New Apps option provides news updates on new applications for MirrorLink offered by Fujitsu or FUJITSU TEN and guides users to download sites FUJITSU TEN manages the app release information on its exclusive website When a connection is established the system references the information about apps already installed in the smartphone and sends out notification if there is an app that is not yet installed 2 Drive Studio Drive Studio allows users to access photo viewer and music player functions provided on the initial menu of Drive Port The app prioritizes the data stored in the Smartphone for reference both photos and music files the data is then relayed to the on board system via the MirrorLink for displaying onto the device s display panel and playing the sound through the cars stereo speak ers Figure 6 Drive Studio also serves as a My Cloud client program allowing the user with My Cloud user ID to access data photos and music saved on their PCs at home and play them on the on board system For this development members of Fujitsu and FUJITSU TEN were involved in the process from the app a Drive Port Note There is no English version of this app As a reference the Japanese version is shown here Figure 5 Drive
14. running iOS and Android compatible devices running Android OS and FUJITSU TEN took the first move by adapting to the iPhone sys tem However an adaptation to the Android system also became urgent Given this situation we chose Wi Fi as a connecting medium between on board systems and Smartphones aiming to realize connectivity compatible both with iPhone and Android devices and also aiming to minimize the dependency on mobile device models so that more users can enjoy the benefit of our services The ECLIPSE Z Series which was launched in Japan in November 2013 offered connectivity to smartphones equipped with a conversational speech recognition agent CarafL electronic user manuals that can also control on board systems Dokodemo Support and other dedicated applications via a Wi Fi note Dokodemo means everywhere in Japanese 60 connection This series has also adopted the MirrorLink which makes the CNS display panel show the smart phone content providing users with an alternative interface Through this media users can access My Cloud Fujitsu s cloud service using the dedicated appli cation Drive Studio and play music files or view pictures directly from their computers at home via the Internet The SZ Series launched in November 2014 is equipped with a wireless communication unit that keeps CNS and service center connected at all times offering out of the box easy to use navigation functionality based on the l
15. signal to noise ratio and demonstrated the effects of reducing non stationary noises such as wind noise 3 Voice recognition Voice recognition is the key technology for real izing a conversational speech recognition agent The voice recognition engines mounted on existing CNSs had all components built in including a recognition dictionary Therefore they were not able to adapt to the latest terms such as names of new shops and brand names or to specific new phrases Since the cloud based voice recognition was successfully put to 62 Human like character Search results on display Wardrobe options Note There is no English version of this app As a reference the Japanese version is shown here Figure 2 Smartphone screen display of the conversational speech agent practical use voice recognition has been relieved of the constraints of library capacity and version main tenance opening up a possibility to develop apps without the conventional restrictions We have adopted the cloud service provided by Nuance Communications Inc Dragon Drive for this speech recognition feature 4 Query comprehension inference and search The speech recognition process yields the users speech in letters and passes it on to the query comprehension process that follows The query com prehension analyzes the users speech to infer their request and proceeds to appropriate responses For example a speech segment Im hungr
16. y will be con strued as want to go somewhere to eat so find a restaurant nearby and take me there Then the system proceeds to locate the current absolute position from the geographical coordinates which the on board sys tem provided at the same time it sent out the request and executes a category search for restaurant through the facility database In a conventional way a user would open the destination search from the system menu select the category restaurants and execute a nearby facility search to find the nearest spot to the current location All these procedures can be completed automatically simply by the user s utterance of the phrase I m hun gry as the query comprehension engine understands the meaning and executes the rest of the process on the users behalf Furthermore a context based compre hension is also possible For example suppose a user FUJITSU Sci Tech J Vol 51 No 4 October 2015 says find me an Italian restaurant in the Shibuya area and sees the search results Then he says on second thought give me a French The system takes the ini tial speech into account and understands the second spoken section as meaning I want to go to a French restaurant in the Shibuya area If the user continues and says Ebisu not Shibuya the engine interprets it as meaning want to go to a French restaurant in the Ebisu area In this way the query comprehension en gine seeks t
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