Mobile phones connect with your car’s dashboard to provide futuristic navigation

(Nokia)

Want to know if there is a car coming around the corner that is obscured by a building? Are you in an area you have never driven through before and want to see if your friends have recommended a restaurant or have found a good spot to visit? How about tracking your holiday trip so you can geolocate your photos when you get back home - all from the dashboard display in your car?

These are just some of the visions mobile phone companies and car manufacturers are hoping to turn into a reality in the near future as mobile phones and cars adapt to provide consumers with seamless connectivity at every moment in their day.

On April 7, mobile phone maker Nokia and automotive supplier Continental announced they had started working together to make mobile devices intuitively connect with owners' vehicles.

The new technology, called Terrminal Mode, will transfer social networking, music, navigation and telephony from the tiny screen of your mobile phone to a dashboard display that minimizes driver distraction.

"Nokia is working together with Continental to explore how we can provide our customer with an enhanced in-vehicle experience by providing access to mobile applications via an automotive enabled HMI [human machine interface]. For example, we are investigating together with Continental how the Terminal Mode technology can help present content from the smartphone available via a large in-vehicle color display, enabling the phone to be controlled via touch screens, steering wheel buttons and communicating information such as turn-by-turn directions over an in-vehicle audio system," said Vesa Luiro, Director, Automotive at Nokia.

Once the technology becomes available, consumers will plug their mobile phone into their car using a high-speed USB connection and the content shown on the mobile phone screen will be replicated on the in-vehicle display. Mobile phone applications will be controlled using voice or steering wheel controls.

American car manufacturer General Motors (GM) has also been developing next-generation navigation systems and has designed an augmented reality information dashboard. GM's enhanced vision system highlights objects (like street signs, edges of the road in poor visibility, animals on the road, and the chosen destination) in the driver's field of vision and overlays them on the dashboard for greater driver safety and enhanced visibility in poor driving conditions.

A video of GM's technology can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0xn1BA4mQc