Mecel Announces the Effortless and Cost-Effective Way to Design Human Machine Interface in Vehicles
DETROIT, Mich. – Mecel AB introduced its Populus Engine and Editor software at the 2008 Transportation Electronics Convergence Conference. These powerful tools give vehicle manufacturers more flexibility, shorten time-to-market and drastically reduce the cost of designing Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) for vehicles, according to Mecel officials.
“HMI design is a great challenge for vehicle manufacturers today”, according to Jonas Nilsson, business manager at Mecel AB. “The automotive industry works hard to keep up with new technology and quickly adopt and adapt new applications. The interface must at the same time be safe in traffic and attractive for consumers.”
A traditional software development approach tends to lead to ever-increasing complexity, resulting in high cost for software development, test and verification. In addition, there is the complexity and cost for brand differentiation; every branded variant should ideally have a different look and feel while keeping the software and hardware platform intact.
Mecel's Populus Engine and Populus Editor allow car manufacturers to reduce software development time and thereby dramatically lower cost and reduce time-to-market. Using a database-driven HMI, no traditional coding is needed. When the information stored in the database changes, the interface will automatically change accordingly. This means that engineers can quickly create a new interface in the Mecel Populus Editor and immediately see how it will look in the vehicle.
“Besides the great advantage of cost-effective development, the database-driven process generates improved software quality which results in better performance than traditional software code,” said Jonas Nilsson, business manager at Mecel AB. “Car manufacturers can now use the same software platform to create several different products for different car models.”
The Mecel Populus Engine and Editor work with all kinds of displays and applications in the automotive industry. Also, Mecel Populus is the ideal HMI solution for platforms requiring good support for connecting to mobile devices and/or Internet.
The database-driven HMI-concept has been developed together with GM during 4 years and is already in production at General Motors.
About Mecel AB
Mecel AB is a systems and software development company with more than 25 years of experience in developing solutions for the automotive industry. We give our customers a competitive edge by introducing new technology in a dependable and cost-effective way. Mecel manages all kinds of systems and software development programs. Our product portfolio includes automotive grade software and tools for HMI development, Bluetooth and in-vehicle communication. Mecel is a subsidiary of Delphi Corporation.
