Method and apparatus of user recommendation system for in-vehicle apps

A method for making user recommendations for infotainment system applications, said method comprising:

• collecting, on a central server computer including a processor and a memory module, user rating data for in-vehicle infotainment system applications from many infotainment system users, including both explicit ratings and implicit ratings, where the implicit ratings are calculated based on recency of a user viewing an application, recency of the user using the application, frequency of the user using the application, duration of the user's usage of the application and monetary value of the application;
• filtering the user rating data for the applications based on relevance to produce filtered user/application rating data, including filtering the users based on user attributes and filtering the applications based on application attributes;
• computing, on the central server computer, inferred ratings for user/application relationships where no rating is available, using the filtered user/application rating data in a user-driven consensus calculation;
• computing, on the central server computer, inferred ratings for user/application relationships where no rating is available, using the filtered user/application rating data in an application-driven consensus calculation;
• synthesizing user application recommendations based on the inferred ratings from the user-driven consensus calculation and the application-driven consensus calculation, including using the inferred ratings from the user-driven consensus calculation and the application-driven consensus calculation, along with external cyberspace-based inputs, in a weighted average calculation;
• and
• providing the user application recommendations to the infotainment system users for the user/application relationships where no rating is available and the inferred ratings are high.

A system for making user recommendations for infotainment system applications, said system comprising:

• a computer including a processor, a memory module and a network connection, where the computer is configured with an algorithm for recommending infotainment system applications including;
• a rating module configured to collect and process user rating data for in-vehicle infotainment system applications from many infotainment system users, including both explicit ratings and implicit ratings, where the user rating data is wirelessly uploaded from a plurality of road vehicles;
• a filtering module configured to filter the user rating data for the applications based on relevance to produce filtered user/application rating data;
• a user-driven consensus module configured to compute inferred ratings for user/application relationships where no rating is available, using the filtered user/application rating data in a user-driven consensus calculation;
• an application-driven consensus module configured to compute inferred ratings for user/application relationships where no rating is available, using the filtered user/application rating data in an application-driven consensus calculation;
• and
• a recommendation synthesizer module configured to synthesize user application recommendations based on the inferred ratings from the user-driven consensus module and the application-driven consensus module, and provide the recommendations to the infotainment system users for the user/application relationships where no rating is available and the inferred ratings are high.