A cluster of expertise

Their wider deployment – for instance in the instrument cluster, either supplementing or substituting for traditional dials and read outs – has been driven equally strongly by their ease of use and their practical (engineering) benefits. Displays themselves have become more robust and perform better than ever before. Unit costs are lower and solutions based on graphic displays are more flexible and adaptable. Designers can produce multiple product variants using a single hardware platform; and they can more easily refresh or redesign existing products, making a major impact on consumer perceptions. For the end user, it becomes possible to assimilate more information, and to customise the look and feel of the vehicle to individual preferences. For the systems engineer, the display itself is only the (very visible) tip of a much larger iceberg – the overall driver information system. Quickly and cost effectively implementing such a TFT based system represents a considerable challenge. This is particularly true now that Human Machine Interface (HMI) design has become well established as a discipline in its own right, so that the overall system design is likely to require the participation of a diverse group of professionals, with expertise in hardware, software, graphic and HMI design. These changes have led hardware engineers away from discrete display driver designs towards the use of more integrated solutions. A growing number of SoC TFT drivers is becoming available, many offered with a supporting ecosystem to facilitate a multi disciplinary HMI design approach. Toshiba’s Capricorn family of single chip TFT drivers provides a good example of such an integrated approach. First launched in 1998, the range has continues to evolve to support market trends.