SmartPlay Studio: A Connected Infotainment Development

Infotainment has always been an important aspect of life which has made its way to car design. The cars today are much more advanced compared to their predecessors. The in-vehicle Infotainment advancements have followed the consumer electronics market in terms of technologies such as Touchscreen; App based Navigation, Voice Assistant and other multimedia services. This trend is going to expand further as smartphones have revolutionized the Infotainment domain with awareness and accessibility to customers. The Infotainment system in the cars are expected to be connected not only to the cloud but various vehicle controllers to display host of information & controls at customer`s fingertips. To design a system that supports connectivity to both cloud and vehicle is challenging in terms of cost and design for the OEMs.

With focus on Indian market condition and global trends, this paper analyzes the customer expectation for Connected Infotainment system. It also explains the methodology adopted by Maruti Suzuki India Limited to: (i) Provide a seamless Connected Infotainment system (Smartplay Studio) for its model line-up (ii) Leveraging Smartphone Linkage technologies to offer connected features like Online Music streaming, Navigation (online/offline) with traffic information, News, Weather & Location based services etc. (iii) Cost Optimization through study of Customer Usage pattern of Infotainment features. This paper presents the technical implementation, lesson learned and experiences based on the development of the Maruti Suzuki`s SmartPlay Studio System.