LAS VEGAS: At CES 2018, in Las Vegas, Bosch is showcasing smart cockpit technology that lets drivers concentrate on driving.
Eyes can be kept where they should be: on the road.
Bosch's idea is that the driver controls car functions using voice commands and a touchscreen with haptic feedback.
“We are uncluttering the cockpit. The more complex the technology in modern vehicles, the simpler and more intuitive control systems need to be,” says Dr Steffen Berns, the president of Bosch Car Multimedia.
Operating human-machine interface (HMI), without getting distracted
According to Allianz Center for Technology, 63 percent of drivers in Germany operate their navigation systems while driving, 61 percent switch through radio stations, and 43 percent browse through complicated menus on their on-board computers.
Distractions like these are among the most frequent causes of accidents.
At the heart of the HMI is a voice-controlled assistant that responds to natural speech and can even understand dialects.
Thanks to natural language understanding (NLU), drivers can talk to the assistant Casey as they would with a passenger.
Another virtue of Casey is her ability to think ahead.
Drawing on artificial intelligence, she can learn to predict likely destinations depending on the time of the day; or if she is asked to switch on the radio, she knows the driver’s preferences, such as listening to the news in the mornings and music in the evenings.
