Image: Craig ONeil

Take a ride in a car with reasoning abilities

Rüdiger Dillmann and his team at the Humanoids and Intelligent Systems Lab at the Karlsruhe  Institute of Technology are working on creating cognitive automobiles that have an understanding of traffic situations and can respond accordingly.

Rüdiger Dillmann, who is a current consortium member of the Robot Companions for Citizens FET Flagship Initiative, is not the only one using robotics to make our driving safer. A group at MIT are working on the development of a driving companion or an Affective Intelligent Driving Agent (AIDA).  Not only will it be able to give the driver directions and traffic information, it will be also be able to monitor a the driver’s  facial expressions for signs of fatigue or agitation. Additionally, it will also be able to give the driver feedback, promoting safer driving and more energy efficient behaviours.

The basic idea envisioned by the MIT group and partners Audi and the Volkswagen Group of America’s Electronics Research Lab, is to have AIDA act  like a friendly and informed copilot. Technology such as this could promote more responsible driving and maybe even quiet the annoying back seat driver!