The automotive industry has recently been moving towards wireless technologies in a big way. We believe that the key are
RFID based Tracking of Parts
– WINMEC Lab is developing the WinRFID platform (
http://winmec.ucla.edu/winrfid) an RFID middleware that allows tracking of parts in the supply chain, inventory tracking in a factory, assembly status tracking and handoff within and across factories, etc. The automotive industry has now started to look into the RFID technology as a way to help them automate their supply chain. For example, GM CTO Anthony Scott expects that the automotive industry will begin to use RFID in 3-5 for its supply chain (source Computerworld).
Industrial Automation and Sensing
– The industry is transitioning from mechanical to electrical controls (e.g. drive by wire) and from electrical to wireless controls (perhaps it can be called drive-by-wireless). UCLA-WINMEC has created an electronic hardware platform and hub called “Reconfigurable wireless interface for networking of sensors” or
ReWINS (http://www.winmec.ucla.edu/rewins/) which allows a variety of sensors such as motion, gyro, accelerometer, chemical, temperature, pressure, etc., to be wireless linked to a variety of wireless technologies including WiFi, Bluetooth, RFID, Mote and Zigbee. The WINMEC Lab in UCLA has developed two industrial applications with this platform for the following two applications:
industrial automation for a company in the automotive and aerospace business for high-fidelity motion sensors and actuators
Integrated GPS and sensor-based container tracking for shipping of containers over land and sea.
Consumer and Communications
– Content delivery from the car to the consumer, from a car to a car and from infrastructure towers to a car will become a key area of research. UCLA-WINMEC Research on Mobile Multimedia Collaborative System of MOBIME is applicable for this need. For further research and information on the MOBIME project, please see
http://winmec.ucla.edu/mobime.