The European Union is funding a new middleware platform designed to allow higher-level software to take full advantage of the readily-available sensors in modern cars. The platform acts as an abstraction layer, providing an easy to use, higher-level API for programs to use while interpreting the resulting API calls into hardware signals for a given car-specific sensor platform.

This is a godsend for embedded developers wanting an easy to use API for accessing sensor information in a car for software manipulation. Previously, a developer had to do extensive research into the design of a given car’s sensor hardware, and write an interface for said hardware from scratch, all to simply take advantage of it via higher-level software.

Operating system theorists can tell you that the role of the higher-level software and that of the hardware-abstracting operating system are two completely different ballparks, and EM2P intends to further sanctify this ideology in the hopes of attracting more developers to the car software industry, similar to how the iPhone or any Java-based smartphone has done.

This comparison to Java-enabled platforms goes even further: different car manufacturers, regardless of their implementation of the sensors at the lower level, are able to provide developers with a true cross-platform API for the utilization of said sensors.

Antonio Marqués Moreno, coordinator of the EMMA project, had this to say about the platform:

One of the particular strengths of EM2P is its scalability. It only worked with one car, but it has been designed to be able to work with an entire city’s vehicle population, which offers enormous opportunities for traffic management and many other areas.

So look at it how an iPhone developer would view their target device: no longer should one have to worry about the underlying hardware and required driver software, as embedded development traditionally requires, but now developers can simply use an EM2P-utilizing application to speedily write their software and distribute it for an EM2P-utilizing car.

In addition to making sensor-utilizing software easier, the EM2P platform aims at encouraging wireless communication between cars and central communication centers. Although it sounds a little Big Brother-ish, it could lead to amazing things as far as extending the functionality of cars and easing the developmental method of applications accomplishing this.

One remaining question, though, is that with all of the tension between the EU and Microsoft, is this an attempt by the EU to go ahead and start forcing the Microsoft-populated automotive application industry to less of a monopoly , or is an effort to go ahead and standardize the application development for all cars regardless of corporate backing?

For Microsoft not to conform to the new EM2P platform would only add further tension between the corporate giant and the EU.

(source)