This post was co-authored by the extended Azure Mobility Team. The past year has been eventful for a lot of reasons. At Microsoft, we've expanded our partnerships, including Volkswagen, LG Electronics, Faurecia, TomTom, and more, and taken the wraps off new thinking such as at CES, where we recently demonstrated our approach to in-vehicle compute and software architecture. Looking ahead, areas that were once nominally related now come into sharper focus as the supporting technologies are deployed and the various industry verticals mature. The welcoming of a new year is a good time to pause and take in what is happening in our industry and in related ones with an aim to developing a view on where it's all heading.

Automotive manufacturer Faurecia created a smart car seat that can tell when you're being driven to the brink, and it responds with fresh air and a massage. The Active Wellness seat contains sensors that detect the driver's heartbeat and breathing patterns. A smart biometric sensing system crunches the numbers to figure out how the driver is feeling. "[The seat] allows us to understand something about your heart rate, your respiration rate, and then analyze that to really understand your stress level," Faurecia advanced innovation manager Matthew Benson told CBS Los Angeles. When the seat senses that the driver is stressed out, it automatically responds with a specific massage pattern designed to calm the person down.