BMW Summer School 2018: Focus on “Intelligent Cars on Digital Roads”.

Raitenhaslach/Munich. During the interdisciplinary
programme of the BMW Summer School 2018, 34 international PhD
students, research peers and industry experts shared their visions and
discussed current advances and challenges in the field of
Emotion-Aware Vehicle Assistants (EVA).

The BMW Summer School 2018 was jointly set up in cooperation with the
Franco-German University (UFA), EURECOM, Technical University of
Munich (TUM) and BayFrance under the umbrella of the German French
Academy for the Industry of the Future by TUM and the IMT (Institut
Mines-Télécom). To mark the 150th anniversary of the TUM, the BMW
Summer School was held at the TUM Science Study Centre
Raitenhaslach from 29 July to 3 August 2018. Applicants were invited
to submit their research in relevant fields, such as user centric
interaction design, in-vehicle sensate environments, cognitive models,
data analytics for emotion-aware systems, psychology of passengers in
autonomous vehicles, human mind and ethics of emotion-aware systems by
15 May 2018.

Mobility currently dominated by a number of powerful
trends.
Advances in artificial intelligence and machine
learning are essential for autonomous driving and the rise of
fully-connected vehicles as they merge with the Internet of Things. A
broad spectrum of smart services for organising personal mobility and
providing features that reach well beyond the car are being developed
and handled for customers by emerging Intelligent Personal Assistants.
The participants in this year’s BMW Summer School had the opportunity
to listen, share and learn about research topics and current frontiers
in machine intelligence.

Summer School fosters interaction between academic and
industry research in three main programme tracks.
In
the keynote track, guest speakers such as Alexander
Zadorojniy from the IBM Research Lab Haifa and Mohammed Ezz from
Affectiva shared and discussed their ideas with participants. In
breakout sessions, small student groups discussed topics like machine
learning methods in autonomous cars and intelligent mobility services
together with research peers and industry experts.

In the poster track, the PhD students presented
their own research to the interdisciplinary audience. “While all
presentations were great, in this year’s competition on the best
research poster, Francesco Walker from University of Twente convinced
our scientific committee with his research idea and to-the-point
presentation on the benefits of extended peripersonal space during
automated driving,” said Dr. Hans-Jörg Vögel, responsible for research
into Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Services at the BMW Group.

The “Lean Startup Machine”, the programme’s third
track, gave the young researchers the opportunity to develop
innovative new ideas in mixed groups of five using agile start-up
working methods such as design thinking. Afterwards, the groups
presented their ideas to the audience in a competitive pitching
format.   “The Lean Startup Machine is a real boot camp for innovative
ideas. The winning team showed exceptional teamwork and understanding
of design and lean thinking methods in their approach envisioning a
modular mobility concept for urban areas,” said Esa Nettamo from the
Digitalist Group, which provided the BMW Summer School with intensive
support in preparing the Lean Startup Machine track this year.

In addition to the three main programme tracks, the students used the
informal atmosphere at evening events with Prof. Jörg Ott from TU
Munich, Prof. Jacques Terken from TU Eindhoven and Kai Demtröder, Vice
President BMW Group IT for Connected Car, Digital Backend, Big Data
and Blockchain to gain insights into both academic and industry career opportunities.

“Once again, we experienced a very creative, collaborative and
inspiring atmosphere. One reason is certainly the interdisciplinary
and international group of participants that makes the Summer School
such a great forum for discussion of digital technologies and the
mobility of the future,” said Prof. Ulrich Finger, director of
EURECOM. 34 PhD students from 18 different countries across Asia,
Africa, North and South America, as well as Europe, with educational
backgrounds ranging from Computer Science to Mechanical, Electrical,
Computer Engineering and Mathematics, participated this year. In
total, there were 60 participants, including guest speakers and
coaches. 50 percent of the participating students received
travel-support grants, taking into account equal opportunities,
underrepresented regions and academic excellence.

The 2019 BMW Summer School is scheduled to take place from 14 to 19
July 2019 and will deal with societal and economic benefits of Big
Data and AI overall, and for urban mobility in particular. Carlo
Ratti, director of MIT Senseable City Lab and founder of CRA design
and innovation office (Turin and New York), is planning to support the
event together with his team: “The interdisciplinary concept allows to
take a multi-faceted approach to discuss data-driven solutions for
urban mobility and educate the innovators of the future. We are
looking forward to an exciting week next year.”

Link to the BMW Summer School:


http://summerschool.bmw

Link to the highlight video: https://youtu.be/qH42CSuuJ4U

 

Speakers at the BMW Summer School 2018.

Industry:

Tim Paganos, Microshare
Ron Rock, W3C Automotive Data
Consortium
Charles Paumelle, LoRa Alliance “Automotive
Data”
Florian Eyben, audEERING
Holger Rapp,
Lyft
Mohammed Ezz, Affectiva
Alexander Zadorojniy, IBM
Research Lab Haifa
Kai Demtröder, Vice President BMW Group IT for
Connected Car, Digital Backend, Big Data and Blockchain
Jane
Vita, Digitalist Group
Loren Schwarz, BMW Group Methods Agile
Development, Artificial Intelligence
Michal Kümmel, BMW Group
Intelligent Mobility Services
Thomas Hubregtsen, BMW Group
Research E/E Software Technologies

Academic:

Mohsen Kaboli, TUM
David Gesbert, EURECOM
Patrick Duvaut,
IMT
Prof. Björn Schuller, University of Augsburg
Prof.
Jacques Terken, TU Eindhoven
Prof. Elisabeth André, University of
Augsburg
Prof. Peter Robinson Quentin Stafford-Fraser,
Cambridge University
Dr. Ann Morrison, University of Southern
Queensland
Susanne Müller, Munich School of
Philosophy
Wolfgang Wörndl, TUM
Muriel Lang, TUM

 

Committee of the BMW Summer School 2018.

Scientific
Chairs:
Prof. Ulrich Finger, Director of EURECOM
Prof. Andreas
Herkersdorf, Head of the Chair for Integrated Systems, TUM
Martin Arend, Head of E/E
Architecture and Technologies, BMW Group

Scientific Programme
Committee:
Prof. Elisabeth André (UNA)
Asaf Adi
(IBM)
Prof. Klaus Bengler (TUM)
Prof. Jonas Beskow
(KTH)
Prof. Jörg Conradt (TUM)
Kynan Eng
(iniVation)
Florian Eyben (audEERING)
Prof. Jérôme Haerri
(EURECOM)
Prof. Benoit Huet (EURECOM)
Ann Morrison
(USQ)
Samer Al Moubayed (Furhat Robotics)
Prof. Jörg Ott
(TUM)
Hannemor Keidel (TUM)
Prof. Björn Schuller
(UNA)
Dr. Loren Schwarz, BMW Group
Dr. Reinhard Stolle, BMW
Group, Vice President Methods Agile Development, Artificial
Intelligence
Prof. Jacques Terken (TU Eindhoven)
Prof.
Raphaël Troncy (Eurecom)
Dr. Hans-Jörg Vögel, BMW Group Research,
New Technologies, Innovations