Hanover/Wolfsburg, 26 February 2010 - The “C3World” research group is working at networking cars to make them “talk” with one another. At the CeBIT 2010, the very latest phases of development in the realm of visionary applications of information and communication technology for the car will be presented. Researchers at Leibniz University in Hanover, the Braunschweig Technical University, the Oldenburg Institute for Computer Science (OFFIS) and the Volkswagen Group Research have created the "C3World" research unit and have been jointly working on solutions for information and communication technology for the car since 2007: Today, modern driver assistance systems offer distance control, warning of unintentional lane change and help with parking. Yet anything that is beyond the range of the driver assistance sensors cannot be taken into account. That is to change in the future, in that vehicles will be able to establish contact with one another and with the environment through radio communication. Thus an automobile of the future, for example, will be informed when a rescue vehicle is approaching a certain intersection exactly at the location one happens to be at that moment.
But "C3World – Connected Cars in a Connected World" does not only develop safety-relevant solution models. Another target is the rise in comfort in future vehicle generations: Modern navigation systems supply traffic jam warnings and information about the location of the next petrol station, a certain restaurant or hotel. The research group from Lower Saxony has developed a search engine now that supplies the driver automatically with a broad range of additional information from the Web using the route or destination.
A further essential aspect of the research is comprised of the challenges deriving from the short life spans of products in the entertainment industry. One after another, new generations of mobile phones and MP3 players want to be integrated in the vehicle. Unfortunately, they become "obsolete" faster than the life of a car is long. Thus the "C3World" researchers are working on concepts to design the infotainment systems in the automobile in a such way so new services and features of future mobile devices can be integrated.
