3D HMI: A small step for human-vehicle interaction, a giant step for automobile intelligence

The smart cockpit is an integrated product of technologies and products such as display, interaction, operating system, and chip. It is also the most intuitive embodiment of automobile intelligence. Today, smart cockpits have become a key factor influencing Chinese consumers' car purchases, and their penetration rate in new car sales has increased from 35% to more than 50% in the past three years. Therefore, major manufacturers have been betting on smart cockpits in recent years, increasing the screen and quantity. Nowadays, volume 3D has become the latest trend.

The emergence of 3D HMI design trend is because human's perception of the world is 3D. Through 3D design, users can better understand the changes taking place in the car, making human-computer interaction smoother and more natural, and effectively improving the driving experience.

Under this trend, real-time 3D engines have become an indispensable part of building HMI. Unity, the world's leading real-time 3D content creation platform, has taken the lead in deploying HMI and empowering many smart cars such as Wei Xiaoli.

As a content creation software, Unity is well aware of the importance of ecology, and has been actively deploying HMI upstream and downstream ecological enterprises, just to provide developers with a more convenient creative environment. Last year, Unity China and Banma Zhixing jointly announced a strategic cooperation. The Unity integrated development environment officially listed AliOS as a standard output operating system. AliOS also became the first smart car operating system in China equipped with the Unity engine.

With the advancement of cooperation, the Unity engine and AliOS have achieved deeper integration and performance optimization, greatly expanding the 3D expressiveness and application scenarios of in-vehicle applications on AliOS, and providing an efficient and reliable 3D HMI for the majority of car companies. underlying platform.

Unity China joins hands with Banma iXing to achieve underlying technology breakthroughs

With the efforts of the teams of Unity China and Banma, AliOS equipped with the Unity engine not only achieves deep integration at the system level on the R&D and design sides, but also improves the 3D HMI design effect and simplifies the development process. A differentiated and personalized smart cockpit 3D HMI design platform was built.

First, Banma’s R&D team deeply integrated AliOS with the Unity engine at the system level, covering life cycle management, access to hardware and networks, etc. In terms of performance, this improves Unity's utilization efficiency of GPU and CPU, allowing HMI to run more smoothly; at the same time, AliOS's unique advantages in multi-screen and multi-window display, cross-screen transfer, etc. also allow Unity's powerful interactive functions to be more Make good use of your value.

At the same time, relying on Unity's powerful real-time rendering capabilities, AliOS can achieve more realistic visual effects with richer details, which allows developers to create diversified personalized themes when designing 3D HMI, and can also implement automatic parking, NOA, 3D The functional design of various scenes such as car models brings better visual and car experience to drivers and passengers.

In addition, in order to better simplify the development process, Unity provides a set of "what you see is what you get" development tools, which not only reduces code development work, but also greatly improves the communication efficiency between designers and developers, and on this basis In recent years, Zebra has also formed a complete 3D HMI design and development process, standards and specifications.

Zhiji Auto IM OS——Driving on the 3D HMI track

Based on the powerful functions provided by the Unity engine and Banma Zhixing, SAIC Zhiji took the lead in creating an intelligent cockpit operating system IM OS based on AliOS. The latest version of IM OS 2.0 integrates the Unity engine at the system level, which can render the UI in real time in a way that saves system resources, providing a solid foundation for the visual upgrade of the smart cockpit.

Taking automatic assisted navigation driving, which is most commonly used by users, as an example, Zhiji IM OS uses Unity's powerful rendering capabilities to generate hyper-realistic 3D map navigation screens in real time based on road conditions, allowing drivers to observe vehicle status and understand road conditions in a more convenient way. It is convenient and efficient. In the past, information that required repeated scanning to confirm may be understood with just a "glance" after being 3D, which also pave the way for improving driving safety.

Similarly, 3D parking also helps drivers make safer decisions with a more intuitive interface and simpler interactions. In the automatic parking scene, the entire vehicle and vehicle surrounding environment data are reconstructed on the screen based on 3D technology. Users can distinguish vehicles, obstacles and parking spaces at a glance, and can intuitively conduct a "God's perspective" on the parking process. ""-like operation to avoid danger to the greatest extent.

In terms of information interaction design, Zhiji IM OS introduces interactive 3D car models. Through Unity's real-time rendering capabilities, it can better spread the brand's pursuit of artistic atmosphere. In addition to being beautiful, 3D car models also greatly reduce the information level, making it easier for users to browse and operate, and providing a more efficient way for human-computer interaction.

In the trend of automobile intelligence, 3D is the only way to go. We believe that 3D HMI design can be used in more ways than just this. With the full cooperation of Unity and Banma, we will provide more 3D HMI capabilities for the majority of car companies, increase research on key core technologies, and carry out key research and development around intelligent cockpit systems, vehicle 3Dization, in-car XR and other technical directions. Promote the intelligent transformation and upgrading of the automobile industry, and use the world's leading real-time 3D technology to drive the transformation of automobiles from transportation to intelligent space.