How is artificial intelligence (AI) influencing tomorrow’s mobility? How can we use its ideas today? How intelligent will the car of the future be? And above all: what role will people play in this? These were the central questions discussed by Mercedes-Benz experts at the fourth Future Talk in Berlin. By Staff Writer
With the triumph of the internet, the mass of data that has become available with this and the huge increase in computing power of today’s computers, AI is now entering people’s lives and also offers big opportunities and potential for the future of the automobile.
“Artificial intelligence is a key future topic for Mercedes-Benz, in-car and beyond, such as in the fields of mobility services or in development and production”, says Anke Kleinschmit, head of Daimler Group Research.
“Artificial intelligence has ceased to be science fiction and the progress in autonomous driving is an impressive proof of this.”
The philosophy of Mercedes-Benz is – always to put human being at the centre of all activities.
Cognitive vehicles
An important objective of Mercedes-Benz’ activities relating to artificial intelligence is the development of cognitive vehicles.
They are not only able to respond to certain situations; they even have enough knowledge about their environment to be able to act autonomously on this basis.
Coupled with corresponding services they could become the fundament for a holistic mobility eco-system of the future.
For example, they could autonomously analyse the current traffic situation for all forms of transport and draw up an individual mobility plan that suits the customer’s personal daily routine and mood. In addition, household robots and delivery drones could be linked to the system with the cognitive car as the control centre for this.
Unlike smartphones and wearables, the car would surround the person and become a surrounding for a digital experience.
It could analyse the driver’s behaviour, interpret needs and adapt accordingly. It would be able to identify what he or she wants in certain situations and what he or she needs.
Examples of this are playing the right music to suit the current mood, setting the most pleasant temperature or developing services relating to health and safety.
Moreover, the cognitive vehicle would offer self-determined access to an individualised artificial intelligence which supports human beings, entertains them and could even challenge them intellectually.
Mercedes-Benz is working intensively on the further optimisation of automatic image and pattern recognition for driver assistance systems and autonomously driving vehicles. A decisive topic here is the interaction of cameras, sensors and the associated computing units. The system breaks down the pictures of road scenes into abstract segments with coloured marking. In this way it identifies buildings, vehicles, persons, trees and pavements among other things and reliably finds traffic lights as well as smaller dangerous obstructions on the road.
Mercedes-Benz is not just using artificial intelligence with regard to its vehicles. Among other things the company is testing self-learning systems in the observation of technology trends, in the interpretation of development and test data as well as for the industrial maintenance of its production and manufacturing facilities.
