Clemson students showcase Deep Orange Digital Cockpit at international show

Published: January 12, 2012

Clemson Ph.D. student Josh Ekandem explains the innovation behind the Deep Orange 2 Digital Cockpit at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show Jan. 10-13 at the Las Vegas Convention Center image by: Peter Hull

LAS VEGAS — Surrounded by some of the world’s most innovative products, Clemson University students are showcasing some of the latest advances in automotive engineering at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show.

Students and faculty are demonstrating the Deep Orange 2 Digital Cockpit, a reconfigurable vehicle dashboard designed and engineered by automotive engineering students at the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) in collaboration with the School of Computing.

The show at the Las Vegas Convention Center attracts more than 140,000 industry representatives from home entertainment and in-car audio to GPS and cameras.

The Clemson students are demonstrating breakthrough technologies, which included:  

• Open Source In-Vehicle Infotainment System — Incorporating a pre-engineered GENIVI-compliant OS distribution running on the Intel Atom E6xx series processor and reference board. Students were able to focus on the user interaction elements of a next-generation infotainment design while reusing all of the underlying Linux software that was created by others. This approach, when applied to commercial products, reduces time to market, reduces costs and enables designers to more quickly add innovation and features. Intel Corp. provided the hardware for this infotainment platform.
• Electronic Vehicle Access Key: cKey App — An Android-based application developed to replicate and enhance the functionalities of a physical car key. The cellular telephone-integrated digital key not only unlocks the car door, but also is the key to a cloud server, where it can access personal profiles with vehicle cockpit themes, favorite radio stations, climate control and other settings. Dell Services Engineering Solutions provided the know-how for realizing the cKey App and communication protocol with the vehicle and cloud server.
• Deep Orange Customization Portal and Cloud Storage Concept — Allows individual vehicle users to personalize the human-machine interface at the dealership — as an initial configuration — or at home. Drivers can store personal profiles and preferences on a cloud server, and configure the vehicle’s user interface and preferences anywhere, any time using a web-based portal.

As part of the graduate automotive engineering program at CU-ICAR, students are required to develop, manufacture and integrate innovations in a new vehicle prototype each year. 

The innovative Deep Orange project provides students with a holistic systems engineering experience incorporating marketing, vehicle architectures, product development, prototyping and performance validation. Each year, a prototype vehicle is developed with a new market focus and technical objectives. The project showcases advanced technologies and provides students with an opportunity to work directly with automotive industry partners to innovate and develop ideas.

A show of this scale allows Clemson to present innovation by students to a diverse audience, said Paul Venhovens, BMW Endowed Chair in automotive systems integration at CU-ICAR, who leads Deep Orange.

The program allows students to think outside of conventional coursework and focus on product and consumer needs. Consequently, the experience of working on Deep Orange makes Clemson’s students very attractive to the automotive industry, he said.

“Our students collaborate with industry and are exposed to the capabilities and limitations of technology,” Venhovens said. “This makes them very attractive to companies looking to hire new graduates.”

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