PhoneGap investigation, analyze of missing features and extension implementation

Abstract

This goal of this project is to investigate a framework called PhoneGap1, to see how it works and to extend it with an extension plugin. This project is involved in another biggest project called C3World2. C3World is a project that is being done in collaboration with the TU Braunschweig, the Leibniz University from Hannover and the OFFIS Institute in Oldenburg in collaboration with the Volkswagen Group Research. This project tries to improve the communications in the cars and with the infotainment systems. The subject which is been developed in the TU Braunschweig is the communication with a mobile device and the device on the car the user is driving with. To develop that subject, one of the goal is to do that communication cross-platform so the car maker can make the car and this system will be used with all the mobile devices. To beat that goal, Jan Sonnenberg, which is a professor in the Insitute für Nachrichtentechnik and is the responsible of this project, uses the framework mentioned above. Another goal they are trying to beat is to share these applications between the mobile device and the car device so the application that is downloaded in the mobile device could be also executed in the car device. The framework PhoneGap is an open source framework that tries to give the chance to programmers to make their applications in standards languages (such as HTML5, CSS and Javascript) but without losing the opportunity to access the native functionality of every mobile device and of course being cross-platform. The scope if my particular project is, first to know investigate about the framework, about how does it work and how this framework is making the applications cross-platform. Second, to analyze the actual connectivity features that car makers are introducing into the actual cars that are being manufactured. Then to match and compare them with the PhoneGap actual features, evaluating the interests of these features for the project. And third, from the above analysis I should get an idea of which extension could I program for the PhoneGap framework. This extension should be something interesting for the project and should be an extension that could be real programmed. From the beginning of this project my top motivation is that I like the idea of having a device on the car which can be used for driving but also for using it as an infotainment system. Since the very beginning I started driving that issue passionate my. What I found on this project is that this passion for car devices was joined with my second passion that is programming. Summarizing I find very a interesting subject to have a cross-platform system in the car from the point of view of the user (the driver) and from the point of view of the programmer.