The world’s major automotive manufacturers are gathering this week at CES 2018 to talk about how AI, big data, robotics, and connectivity are changing the industry. Boasting 297,000 net square feet of vehicle tech exhibit space and named one of the 10 Best Automotive shows by USA Today, CES promises to impress with huge announcements from big names.
NVIDIA Chief Executive Jensen Huang takes the stage at CES 2018
CES 2018: The Future of Automotive Tech
Last night, Ford president and CEO Jim Hackkett delivered the keynote addressing mobility solutions and the need for smarter cities to accommodate them. Their focus this year is clearly on connectivity, both with infrastructure and between vehicles, specifically towards the goal of making vehicles safer and traffic flow more smoothly. In fact, The Consumer Technology Association estimates that there will be 88 so-called “smart cities” by 2025, with $34 billion in global spending on related technology by 2020.
Speaking to a crowd of nearly 1,000 people, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang announced that the company is collaborating with over 320 partners on self-driving, including new efforts with key players on three continents. Capping Huang’s talk was the announcement of the Xavier autonomous-machine processor, a huge leap forward in on-road AI computing power. It delivers 30 trillion operations per second while consuming just 30 watts of power, and is 15 times more efficient than its predecessor. Yet, it can fit on a board smaller than a license plate, replacing the trunk full of computing gear used in many of today’s autonomous vehicles.
On the other side of the CES 2018 hall, Nissan wowed attendees with their “Brain-to-vehicle” technology. Nissan’s Brain-to-Vehicle (B2V) technology interprets signals from the driver’s brain, using the information to assist with driving and help the vehicle’s autonomous system learn from the driver. Nissan is hoping the new technology will lead to quicker reactions from autonomous systems and a more pleasurable autonomous driving experience. They put together an excellent video you can see here:
In the “hotly anticipated” category, Mercedes-Benz will finally unveil their latest onboard infotainment system dubbed the Mercedes-Benz User Experience (or MBUX), and it is promised to be a “pioneering in-car experience”. MBUX will make its production debut on Mercedes-Benz’s new compact cars, which the automaker claims will arrive sometime later this year.
The Ties That Bind
All of this technology is impressive and awe-inspiring in its creative applications, and even though it spans just about every category imaginable, it all shares a tie that binds – connectivity. In fact, connected cars are exploding onto the scene, and with a 45% annual growth rate, we’ll see 220 million of them on the road by 2020.
When it comes to vehicle connectivity, NetFoundry is uniquely qualified to fit the bill. Between the hardware-free, identity-driven, ephemeral nature of our AppWANs, the multiple layers of military-grade security, and ease of scalable implementation, no solution works more effectively to securely and reliably connect cars to vendors, clouds, and other cars than NetFoundry’s. In fact, we’re already doing it.
We recently partnered with Micron, and, leveraging their device identity and hardware roots of trust, developed a solution where our AppWANs secure communications between connected car IoT and the cloud. Each AppWAN is driven by identity, context, or policy, and dynamically tunes to meet performance requirements for the specific application. In the land of IoT, particularly Industrial IoT, Automation is critical due to sheer volume and policy requirements that IoT endpoints have. For this solution, NetFoundry provides zero-touch onboarding that leverages the Micron Authenta device-specific identity so that each IoT endpoint automatically accesses network-wide services and resources based on defined policy. Built-in performance and path remediation ensures highly secure sessions from the endpoint to the Azure IoT Hub or other required destinations, along with optimized performance and application responsiveness.
We also partnered with Neustar to power the Neustar Trusted Device Identity (TDI) solution. Neustar TDI delivers a next-generation approach to trusted identity management, offering the scale and security required for IoT. By applying this new approach to traditional PKI with multi-factor device authentication, Neustar TDI can authenticate and revoke identities in real-time, monitor and detect behavior anomalies, as well as enable organizations to quickly isolate and recover from breaches. This way the IT Network Operations Center (NOC) can take back control of revocation and restoration. The NetFoundry platform enables Neustar to integrate AppWANs into their solutions with no restrictions on network providers, VPNs, or custom CPE. Each AppWAN is driven by the context of the application, such as identity, compliance, and performance needs, enforcing application level micro-segmentation across any set of networks and clouds, with superior performance and security results, while enabling complete, centralized control and visibility of each AppWAN.
We’re working hard to be the connective tissue that binds the connected car ecosystem and we’re excited to see so much new tech coming out of this year’s CES 2018 show. If you’re at the show, drop us a line in the contact form to the right, and we’ll set up a personalized demo. If you’re interested in learning more about our platform and how it completely changes how networks are done, download our whitepaper below.
