Instrument clusters that display all information on a TFT-LCD screen, also known as reconfigurable instrument clusters, have become the new trend in automotive interiors. DENSO mass-produced the world's first reconfigurable instrument cluster in 2008. To satisfy customer requirements, large quantities of resources were required. Coupled with an iterative process due to requirement changes, development costs became very high. Reducing development costs was vital in order to expand the reconfigurable instrument cluster product line.
A new artist-centric HMI (human machine interface) software development workflow is proposed to reduce the development effort by introducing a data converter and real-time 3D rendering engine in our earlier paper. Our goal is to realize an environment with little programming during development by utilizing a tool chain to automate the majority of the programmer's tasks. DENSO succeeded in automating graphics development with data conversion and a rendering engine. The next goal is to integrate a model-based development tool to improve development efficiency.
Pushing forward integration with the model-based development tool, our product is compared with existing tools by using DAR (Decision Analysis and Resolution) approach. The tool was enhanced as a result of the DAR. The integration of model-based development tool and enhancement of our product is complete.
This paper reports the approach for determining the evaluation criteria and each of their weight of importance based on the requirements demanded in the HMI software development tools for reconfigurable instrument clusters. The result of improvement effect by applying our new HMI software development tool to a reconfigurable instrument cluster project is also reported.