Sophisticated AI at Heart of Smart Car Platform Upgrade

Nuance Communications has taken its position in the lineup of tech companies preparing to showcase connected car technologies at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show, and has already won an award for its solutions.

Those solutions arrive in the form of upgrades to Nuance’s Dragon Drive smart car platform. The platform already sported voice interaction-based AI assistant technology, and Nuance has now added gaze detection to the mix, allowing drivers to simply look at a landmark outside of the vehicle and ask a question about it, such as, “Does that restaurant have a good rating?”

That points to more sophisticated AI, and indeed Dragon Drive’s enhanced AI assistant is now designed to interface with other AI entities, and to assess contextual information in its calculations and responses. It can even use voice biometrics to respond to particular passenger requests, such as increasing the temperature around a specific seat if the user says she’s cold.

In a statement announcing the upgraded platform, Nuance Mobile SVP Arnd Weil pointed to the growing importance of IT in the automotive sector, asserting, “The car is quickly rising to become the leading AI platform, especially with the future of connected and autonomous vehicles upon us.”

The upgraded platform has already netted Nuance a CES 2018 Innovation Award, which should help it stand out as connected car technologies comprise a key theme of the expo. CES 2018 is slated to run from January 9th to 12th in Las Vegas.