Nvidia, Baidu, BMW, Nissan, Volkswagen, Daimler, Qualcomm, General Motors, Samsung, Harman, LG, Ford, Honda, … All of them were protagonists at CES in Las Vegas , which every year is a little more than a month ahead to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona which takes place at the end of February.
And all of them were protagonists because they showed their strengths before the convergence between automotive, telecommunications and Artificial Intelligence that a business in 2030 of more than 750,000 million dollars is coming , according to the Mckinsey consultancy.
There is still a long way to go, however, so that on the roads we see, as we see traditional vehicles today, driverless autonomous cars. Until there is clear legislation in this regard, and security measures that prevent the vehicles themselves from being hacked in the same way that computers or smartphones are hacked today, there will not be roads full of driverless smart cars .
But the consultancy Strategy Analitics goes even further and states that, “until 2035 half of the cars on the road will not be autonomous , although it could happen more quickly if there is legislation that encourages autonomy and even prohibits driving, or through autonomous cars that replace traditional cars. All this is possible, but it would be very audacious to think that there will be many autonomous cars before 2025 ”.
However, for this to happen in 2035 Strategy Analitics also says that we will need 6G telecommunications networks , when there are not even 5G networks yet.
At the moment, Apple, Google, IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, Intel, Qualcomm, Nvidia, LG , … all of them strive to incorporate their technologies in the vehicle to make it autonomous, connected and intelligent , and to be also able to extract, visualize and analyze the vast amount of data increasingly generated by vehicles and develop solutions for driving and car occupants.
IBM , for example, estimates that by 2020 connected cars will generate a staggering 350MB of data every minute , while Intel believes autonomous cars will generate 4TB of data per day . This figure, the one that Intel counts, would be the one that an autonomous car would generate for 15 hours in operation a day.
The consulting firm Ovum , for its part, says that the migration of digital assistants – from Apple (Siri), Microsoft (Cortana) or Amazon (Alexa) – to connected cars is already underway . “Connected cars will play a central role in orchestrating voice-activated and personalized digital services, and will facilitate commerce, just as they are beginning to do on today’s smartphones.”
However, today’s digital assistants do not understand cars or driving , although advances in Artificial Intelligence and the integration that manufacturers such as Seat, Ford, Tesla, BMW or Daimler are making of them in their systems is changing the industry. of the automotive industry.
Apple Siri Digital Assistant , for example, is available for a growing number of connected car models through Apple CarPlay , which allows vehicle users to connect their iPhone and call Siri to control certain iPhone applications.
China’s Baidu has similar plans to bring its Digital Assistant to other devices and platforms beyond smartphones , and has started making inroads with connected cars, specifically with Hyundai Motors . Microsoft, for its part, has intensified the development of its Microsoft Connected Vehicle platform, which allows the integration of Cortana, and has partnered with Renault-Nissan .
Another example is the processor manufacturer Nvidia , which showed a test vehicle that traveled without a driver in New Jersey in Las Vegas , and together with ZF and China’s Baidu presented the first autonomous vehicle computer with Artificial Intelligence .
Intel also unveiled the first autonomous vehicle in a 100-car test fleet in Las Vegas, revealing that BMW, Nissan and Volkswagen are already rolling out maps based on their Mobileye superchip. And it also announced an alliance with Ferrari in North America for the use of Intel Artificial Intelligence technologies to use the data obtained on the tracks of the circuits in order to improve the experience of both fans and drivers.
And General Motors announced in January in Las Vegas that it will produce its own driverless vehicle for 2019, while Mercedes-Benz unveiled its new Mercedes-Benz User Experience multimedia system, an artificial intelligence-enabled infotainment system that combines a touch screen again. design with augmented reality navigation, voice activation and a new three-word address navigation system. Known as MBUX, it will go into production this spring with the compact A-Class.
The latest leader to join Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft to incorporate their technology into autonomous and smart cars has been Samsung. After buying Harman a year ago for 8,000 million euros, in the city of casinos it unveiled the Digital Cockpit platform, which includes a set of experiences that fit the connected lifestyle, without compromising safety or performance. The System integrates with the vehicle’s instrument panel through Bixby, Samsung’s voice assistant, haptic feedback, physical controls and buttons on the steering wheel through a single central screen that brings together all the information and functions of the vehicle .
Using multiple screens, taking advantage of HARMAN’s Ignite platform, the user’s automotive experience can be personalized for the driver and passengers through services such as virtual personal assistants, interchangeable personal profiles, augmented reality, … The Android operating system is integrated into four screens, an industry first.
Developed in close collaboration with HARMAN, Samsung has also announced its new DRVLINE platform, an open and modular platform for autonomous driving that has been designed to scale from Level 3, driving assistance, to Levels 4 and 5, driving full autonomous. The two companies will continue to focus on engineering solutions , high-performance computing, sensor technologies, algorithms, artificial intelligence, and connectivity and cloud solutions that are scalable and capable of providing self-piloting of all levels, up to Level 5.
It will be, experts say, this combination of AI technologies , machine learning and advanced analytics that will transform the driving experience , fueled by a growing range of data created from inside and outside of vehicles. Although, as all the experts point out, we will have to wait, at least until 2035, for all these experiences to begin to become general.
The first ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) product developed by HARMAN and Samsung will be a camera with the ability to anticipate lane departures, adaptive cruise control, collision warning and algorithms to detect the presence of pedestrians. The new system combines Samsung’s camera expertise with HARMAN’s ADAS 360 solution, which combines machine learning and data processing with augmented reality to create a self-learning virtual co-passenger that ensures that the connected driving experience it is individual and safe. This new system will start working in 2018.
Although on the horizon there are fears that haunt the Society in the use of Artificial Intelligence, and of which we will undoubtedly speak in this Blog in future articles, the benefits, as Stephen Hawking himself has pointed out on multiple occasions, and despite also point out the dangers, they will be much greater.
And one of these much-talked-about dangers is job loss. In this sense, the consulting firm Gartner says that Artificial Intelligence will create in 2020 around 2.3 million new jobs, while it will destroy 1.8 million. It will create more than it will destroy, says Gartner. And not even today we can glimpse the new jobs that will emerge with artificial intelligence in 20 years.
“Before long,” says Harry Shum, “many mundane and repetitive tasks will be performed automatically by intelligent machines, freeing us from spending our time and energy to be more productive and creative, and to make significant advances in areas such as health, agriculture, education or transportation ”.
Before, or at the same time, other relevant issues such as privacy, cybersecurity or even ethics will have to be resolved, to ensure that Artificial Intelligence is used in a responsible, fair, transparent, inclusive and safe manner.
