By
Godfrey Benjamin
January 22nd, 2024
The companies will collaborate at IBM’s Watson headquarters in Munich to create more personalized driving experience.
IBM and the BMW Group have announced a new partnership aimed at exploring the potential of Watson cognitive computing. The companies intend to create more intuitive driver support systems for cars of the future personalizing the driving experience in general. Interestingly that IBM’s Watson has recently been included in the list of most popular Internet of Thing’s platforms.
According to the agreement, a group of researchers from the BMW Group will work at IBM’s global headquarters for Watson Internet of Things (IoT) in Munich, Germany, where the teams will collaborate to improve intelligent assistant functions for drivers.
The IBM Munich center is probably one of the best places for collaborative innovation as the company is planning to invest USD $200 million there as part of a global investment of USD $3 billion to bring Watson cognitive computing to the Internet of Things.
BMW engineers will be lucky to become the first team to work inside IBM’s building within one of the newly-launched industry ‘collaboratories’. They will join their efforts with IBM’s own team of technologists, developers and consultants.
“Watson is transforming how people interact with the physical world – helping to create safer, more efficient and personal experiences at home, at work and on the road,” said Harriet Green, Global Head of IBM’s Watson IoT business.
“With this agreement, our companies will work together to lay the foundations so that drivers can benefit from Watson’s conversational and machine learning capabilities. Our insight shows that while the car will remain a fixture in personal transportation, the driving experience will change more over the next decade than at any other time of the automobile’s existence,” he added.
IBM will locate 4 BMW i8 hybrid sports cars at its Munich Watson IoT HQ to advance automotive research. Prototype solutions which will run on IBM’s Bluemix cloud platform will demonstrate the potential of Watson IoT technologies to create new conversational interfaces between cars and drivers.
Watson’s machine learning capabilities will enable vehicles to get more information about the preferences, needs and driving habits of their drivers over time, which in its turn will increase the level of comfort and safety.
The car’s manual will be ingested into Watson so that drivers will be able to ask question about the vehicle with full concertation on the road at the same time. IBM and the BMW Group aim to combine Watson solution with data from the Weather Company (an IBM business) as well as realtime, contextual updates about route, traffic and vehicle status to provide drivers with the fullest information.