PARTNER FEATURE: Xiaomi unveiled its Human x Car x Home platform at MWC Barcelona 2024, as the company steps up efforts to redefine the boundaries of technology integration by seamlessly meeting all user needs within one smart ecosystem.
Xiaomi’s transition from Smartphone x AIoT to its new Human x Car x Home ecosystem merges personal devices, smart home products and cars, not only providing seamless connectivity of devices, but offering real-time coordination and collaboration with industry partners.
The company’s first EV vehicle,Xiaomi SU7 an integral element of the new platform, debuted on the international stage at the end of 2023, offering a glimpse into Xiaomi’s vision for an intelligent future, said Daniel Desjarlais, director of communications at Xiaomi International.
“Our innovation is designed first and foremost based on the needs of our users. Human x Car x Home embodies this.”
By integrating people, cars and homes, the company aims to create end-to-end interconnectivity beyond anything available today, Desjarlais declared. “We invite MWC attendees to discover first-hand how Xiaomi’s vision is transforming futuristic concepts into actualities by changing how we connect.”
Last year, Xiaomi shifted from its MIUI OS to Xiaomi HyperOS, covering personal devices, cars and home products, with a strategic focus on comprehensive refactoring, cross-device intelligent connectivity, proactive intelligence and end-to-end security.
Xiaomi said Xiaomi HyperOS delivers a redefined user experience, delivering unparalleled functionality and security across interconnected devices. More than just an open-source technological advancement, Desjarlais highlighted the OS features system-level innovation designed to foster unhindered cross-device collaboration and ensure consistent operations across areas of Xiaomi’s integrated smart-life platform.
Xiaomi HyperOS is the foundation of the Human x Car x Home ecosystem. By engaging with global partners, developers and manufacturers, the Xiaomi HyperOS will empower the ecosystem to leverage an expansive range of possibilities.
Xiaomi SU7 is positioned as a full-size, high-performance eco-technology sedan that “pushes boundaries in performance and ecosystem integration”. Its EV initiative is backed by an R&D investment of more than CNY10 billion ($1.4 billion) and a global team of more than 3,400 engineers and 1,000 technical experts in key areas.
Mission to unify
In the IoT era, Xiaomi faced the challenge of navigating complexities arising from the multitude of device operating systems and the interoperability challenges between various ecosystems.
This experience drove Xiaomi to innovate at an entirely new level, resulting in Xiaomi HyperOS, which it started developing in 2017. The company’s mission is to unify all ecosystem devices into a single, integrated system framework able to deliver peak device performance, ensure a consistent user experience and facilitate seamless connectivity across all Xiaomi devices.
The core of Xiaomi HyperOS is Linux and Xiaomi’s in-house Vela system, giving it compatibility and system resource management capabilities. The OS’ underlying layer supports more than 200 processor platforms and some 20 standard file systems, covering hundreds of device types and thousands of SKUs. It allows for flexible configuration, operation and deployment in accordance with hardware requirements.
HyperMind is the cognitive centre of Xiaomi’s device ecosystem, bringing cross-device connections into the era of proactive intelligence, enabling devices to understand user needs and act accordingly. HyperMind uses four perceptual capabilities of devices – environment, vision, sound and behaviour – to learn user requirements and automatically adapt devices to their needs.
For example, if a user always turns on the living room light after unlocking a smart door lock, HyperMind will automatically illuminate the room after learning this pattern, after obtaining user consent. This innovation simplifies complex cross-device connectivity and reduces traditional machine learning costs, allowing users to enjoy the convenience of device connectivity without needing to understand intricate logic comprehension or trigger mechanisms.
Xiaomi HyperOS uses large foundation models, enabling it to empower system applications. Xiaomi’s AI Assistant allows direct access to large foundation model text-generation capabilities via its user interface, enabling tasks like speech generation and article summarisation. The real-time subtitle feature has been enhanced to transcribe video conference conversations into notes and intelligent meeting summaries. Users can use spoken phrases to search for images in their photo albums and create AI images based on existing portraits.
Open platform
Xiaomi HyperOS follows the principle of open source, nurturing an open software ecosystem, and welcomes partners to join it in shaping an intelligent ecosystem and providing a better user experience.
It recently announced the open-sourcing of Xiaomi Vela, an IoT software platform tailored for consumers, based on the open-source NuttX real-time operating system. Vela provides a uniform software platform across various IoT hardware, simplifying development by abstracting underlying hardware differences and offering a unified software interface for upper-level developers. This approach unifies disparate application scenarios, streamlines development and enhances efficiency. By making Vela open-source to IoT device manufacturers and developers, Xiaomi fosters IoT device innovation, improves performance and enable real-time connectivity capabilities across a wide spectrum of devices, it noted.
The company said it is committed to providing not only high-quality products and services to users worldwide, but also places environmental protection and sustainable development at the core of its business strategy. It vowed to reach carbon neutrality by 2040 and has demonstrated transparency in its environmental endeavours by releasing its first climate action white paper at COP28.
The targets align with Xiaomi’s active engagement in vital sustainability initiatives, such as China’s Green Electric 100% Initiative, advocating widespread adoption of renewable energy and a robust electronic waste recycling programme. Supporting its mission to operate sustainably, Xiaomi adopted a circular economy model with the goal of recycling 38,000 tons of electronic waste from 2022 to 2026.
Imaging partnership
In its mission to develop more intuitive mobile photography experiences and improve imaging technology, Xiaomi recently expanded its partnership with Leica, with plans to establish a joint optical institute in Beijing covering 2,644 square metres and comprising three laboratories.
Xiaomi stated the pair will invest significant resources and employ a joint team of more than 200 experts to design ultra-precision optical lenses in a compact form factor; deliver ideal performance in computational photography; set high optical standards for lenses; and research and employ cutting-edge optoelectronic technology.
Xiaomi said the institute aims to “unite an array of integrated interdisciplinary sciences”, including digital imaging and AI technologies.
The Xiaomi 12S Ultra, the first smartphone jointly developed by the two companies, is showcased at MWC24 alongside other flagship smartphones. The newly launched Xiaomi 14 Series features Leica Summilux optical lenses.