The research – conducted by MHP – surveyed 4,700 car drivers across China, the US, Germany, the UK, Italy, Sweden, and Poland, revealing significant geographical disparities in AI acceptance and understanding.

According to the study, while AI is becoming integral to modern vehicles, European consumers remain hesitant about its implementation and value proposition.

Regional disparities

The study found that 48 percent of Chinese respondents view in-car AI predominantly as an opportunity, while merely 23 percent of European respondents share this optimistic outlook. In Europe, 39 percent believe AI’s opportunities and risks are broadly balanced, while 24 percent take a negative stance, suggesting the risks outweigh potential benefits.

Understanding of AI technology also varies significantly by region. While over 80 percent of Chinese respondents claim to understand AI’s use in cars, this figure drops to just 54 percent among European drivers, highlighting a notable knowledge gap.

Marcus Willand, Partner at MHP and one of the study’s authors, notes: “The figures show that the prospect of greater safety and comfort due to AI can motivate purchasing decisions. However, the European respondents in particular are often hesitant and price-sensitive.”

The willingness to pay for AI features shows an equally stark divide. Just 23 percent of European drivers expressed willingness to pay for AI functions, compared to 39 percent of Chinese drivers. The study suggests that most users now expect AI features to be standard rather than optional extras.

Dr Nils Schaupensteiner, Associated Partner at MHP and study co-author, said: “Automotive companies need to create innovations with clear added value and develop both direct and indirect monetisation of their AI offerings, for example through data-based business models and improved services.”

In-vehicle AI opportunities

Despite these challenges, traditional automotive manufacturers maintain a trust advantage over tech giants. The study reveals that 64 percent of customers trust established car manufacturers with AI implementation, compared to 50 percent for technology firms like Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

The research identified several key areas where AI could provide significant value across the automotive industry’s value chain, including pattern recognition for quality management, enhanced data management capabilities, AI-driven decision-making systems, and improved customer service through AI-powered communication tools.

“It is worth OEMs and suppliers considering the opportunities offered by the new technology along their entire value chain,” explains Augustin Friedel, Senior Manager and study co-author. “However, the possible uses are diverse and implementation is quite complex.”

The study reveals that while up to 79 percent of respondents express interest in AI-powered features such as driver assistance systems, intelligent route planning, and predictive maintenance, manufacturers face significant challenges in monetising these capabilities, particularly in the European market.

See also: MIT breakthrough could transform robot training

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Affectiva is the creator of Emotion AI, a category of artificial intelligence which can understand human emotions, cognitive states, activities, and the objects people use through analysing facial and vocal expressions. The AI was trained using more than 10 million face videos from 90 countries.

Smart Eye are pioneers in eye-tracking that understands, assists, and predicts human intentions and actions to “bridge the gap between man and machine for a better, sustainable tomorrow.”

It’s not difficult to see why Affectiva believes its AI system with Smart Eye’s eye-tracking has such huge potential for completely revolutionising the interactions between humans and computers—improving accessibility, capabilities, and safety.

Dr Rana el Kaliouby, Co-Founder and CEO of Affectiva, said:

“We are thrilled to be merging with Smart Eye as the next step in Affectiva’s journey. This is a unique and exciting opportunity for us to join Smart Eye in bringing to market advanced AI with more comprehensive capabilities than either of us could provide alone.

Not only are our technologies very complementary, so are our values, our teams, our culture, and perhaps most importantly, our vision for the future.

We share a conviction that the AI we are building now will one day become ubiquitous. It will be built into the fabric of the technologies we use in our daily lives and will forever change the way we interact with technology and each other in a digital world.”

Smart Eye has over two decades of experience in eye-tracking and delivering automotive-grade Driver Monitoring Systems (DMS). The company already has 84 production contracts with 12 of the 20 largest global OEMs in the automotive sector.

Martin Krantz, Founder and CEO of Smart Eye, commented:

“As we watched the DMS category evolve into Interior Sensing, monitoring the whole cabin, we quickly recognized Affectiva as a major player to watch.

Affectiva’s pioneering work in establishing the field of Emotion AI has served as a powerful platform for bringing this technology to market at scale. At the end of the day, this is about saving lives and bridging the gap between humans and machines.

In the future, looking back at this moment in time, I am convinced that this is a decisive moment for road safety thanks to the announcement that we have made today.”

Affectiva has been increasing its focus on the automotive sector which it believes to be very exciting due to the rapid advancements being made with connected and even driverless vehicles.

In March, Affectiva was granted six patents for detecting the awareness and emotions of vehicle occupants.

Gabi Zijderveld, CMO of Affectiva, told AI News earlier this year:

“Back in 2018, we launched Affectiva Automotive AI, the first multi-modal in-cabin sensing solution to understand what is happening with people in a vehicle. It uses cameras in the car to measure, in real-time, the state of the driver, the state of the occupants, and the state of the vehicle interior (i.e. cabin).

This insight helps car manufacturers, fleet management companies and rideshare providers improve road safety, by understanding dangerous driver behaviour such as drowsiness, distraction and anger. It can also be used to create more comfortable and enjoyable transportation experiences, by understanding how passengers react to the environment, including content they can consume in the back of the car.”

With so much competition in the in-car AI space, Affectiva and Smart Eye have decided to stop effectively competing against each other and pool their resources to build industry-leading innovations.

Given what both companies have achieved as separate entities, we look forward to seeing what they can do together.

(Image Credit: Affectiva)

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Anadolu Insurance is using IBM technology for assessing its auto claims – specifically, the IBM Watson Visual Recognition service.

On average, Anadolu reviews around 1200 vehicle damage files each day. Manually checking each file was a slow and tedious process, but – with 63 percent contradicting the amount of described damage – it’s a vital operation.

Mehmet Abacı, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Anadolu Insurance, said:

“Insurance is one of the primary industries that are affected by technological developments the most. As the largest and long-established company of Turkey, we are also a leader in the use of technology.

We want to reduce the analysis and repair processes to a few hours by using artificial intelligence in analysis of minor damages in our customers’ vehicles. Before that, we also performed such work and managed to pay our customers for minor housing damages such as glass breakage within five seconds. Now we have also started to use artificial intelligence technology in auto insurance more efficiently.

IBM Watson is helping Anadolu’s customers take optimal photos of their damaged vehicle. Affected parts are identified along with the scope of the damage for the AI to determine whether the parts need repair, replacement, or further expert consultation.

Volkan Sözmen, IBM Turkey Country General Manager, comments:

“We are proud that our long-standing collaboration with Anadolu Insurance has acquired a new dimension with this project. IBM Watson’s visual recognition capabilities will greatly contribute to making Anadolu Insurance’s processes more efficient and hassle-free for its customers.

We believe that this project will not only help the insurance industry gain new momentum, but also change the course of the digital transformation journey.”

Experts from Anadolu Insurance are working alongside IBM’s data scientists to train Watson with the language associated with damages and auto parts; such as buffer, door and mud-guards.

The insurance claims solution is expected to launch for contracted auto repair shops in the second half of this year.

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Pegasus is powered by four high-performance AI processors. It couples two of NVIDIA’s newest Xavier system-on-a-chip processors — featuring an embedded GPU based on the NVIDIA Volta architecture — with two next-generation discrete GPUs with hardware created for accelerating deep learning and computer vision algorithms.

Level 5 represents fully autonomous vehicles which do not even have a steering wheel or gas pedal for manual control. This will require significant power to process all the required operations quickly.

“Creating a fully self-driving car is one of society’s most important endeavors — and one of the most challenging to deliver,” said Jensen Huang, NVIDIA founder and CEO. “The breakthrough AI computing performance and efficiency of Pegasus is crucial for the industry to realize this vision.”

“New types of cars will be invented”

NVIDIA claims its Drive PX Pegasus solution is able to deliver more than 320 trillion operations per second. The company’s previous self-driving car supercomputer, the Nvidia Drive PX 2, was around 13 times slower.

Building a fully autonomous Level 5 self-driving vehicle requires thousands of sensors including high-resolution, 360-degree cameras. The position of the vehicle must be calculated within centimeter accuracy to ensure safety. NVIDIA estimates the computing demands of driverless vehicles to be up to 100 times more intensive than the most advanced cars today.

Autonomous vehicles are set to be a huge industry in the coming years and NVIDIA is rapidly positioning itself as a leader in the space. Of the 225 partners developing on the NVIDIA DRIVE PX platform, more than 25 are developing fully autonomous robotaxis using NVIDIA CUDA GPUs.

“Driverless cars will enable new ride- and car-sharing services. New types of cars will be invented, resembling offices, living rooms or hotel rooms on wheels,” continues Huang. “Travelers will simply order up the type of vehicle they want based on their destination and activities planned along the way. The future of society will be reshaped.”

NVIDIA believes fully autonomous will have a drastic impact on people’s lives. Millions of hours, it claims, of ‘lost time’ will be recaptured by would-be drivers being able to work, play, eat, or even sleep on their daily commutes. Safety, meanwhile, will improve — with fewer accidents caused by fatigued, distracted, or impaired drivers.

Pegasus will be available to NVIDIA automotive partners in the second half of 2018.

What are your thoughts on NVIDIA Pegasus? Let us know in the comments.

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