Munich/Macau. BMW Group Research will be making its
debut appearance at the prestigious IEEE/RSJ International Conference
on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) this year. It will be staging
a total of three workshops on artificial intelligence (AI) and
robotics at the event in Macau, having secured its place at the
world’s leading robotics conference with the submission of
groundbreaking content for the initial peer-review process. As well as
reinforcing the BMW Group’s knowledge base and ability to actively
influence scientific debate both now and in the future, this also
represents confirmation of the considerable expertise the company has
amassed in industrial applications for AI and robotics as part of the
international academic community.
The BMW Group already makes judicious use of AI throughout the value
chain. The three workshops it will be running at IROS 2019 – devised
in collaboration with partners including the Technical University of
Munich – focus on research into groundbreaking applications for AI and
robotics. A keynote speech from Michael Würtenberger, Head of the BMW
Group’s “Project AI” Excellence Cluster, will kick off the workshops.
“AI is already being applied pragmatically in many different areas of
the company where it can help us to reduce complexity, increase
efficiency and generate added value for our customers,” says
Würtenberger. “At BMW Group Research, we are in a position where we
can explore the future possibilities of AI, enabling us to address
these areas at an early stage in our development activities.”
Focusing on the future of human-machine
interaction.
The research workshops will centre around
the development of future forms of artificial intelligence based on
biological models, materials and technologies in robotics and
interaction between humans and intelligent vehicles. Below is a
summary of the workshops’ content.
Intelligent vehicles get in touch with emotions.
In the future, vehicles may be able to actively cater
to their occupants’ requirements far more effectively than today with
the help of AI. Proactive abilities and personalisation will be of
crucial importance for comfort- and safety-related areas in autonomous
vehicles. The key here will be the ability to correctly interpret
intentions and the current emotional state of vehicle users. The
purpose of this workshop is to demonstrate and discuss how human
behaviour and emotionality can be registered and processed using a
multimodal system of sensors in order to then investigate and develop
AI-based functions.
“This workshop brings together international leading experts to
discuss future challenges and possible solutions for intelligent
vehicles,” says Alois Knoll, Professor of Robotics, Artificial
Intelligence and Real-time Systems at the Technical University of
Munich. “Interpreting human behaviour intelligently is a vital
building block in creating seamless, safe and reliable interaction
between humans and autonomous machines, and pivotal in growing their
users’ trust in this new technology.”
Tactile perception: how robots process touch.
The development of an artificial sense of touch offers enormous
potential for robotics. Enabling machines to replicate the human sense
of touch requires the complex interplay of myriad components, ranging
from sensors to intelligent perception algorithms. This ability will
be essential if humans and machines are to interact and collaborate
with one another in a natural and safe way. This workshop focuses on
the development of the necessary sensor technology and its integration
into existing robotic systems. Potential applications for this
technology at the BMW Group include new forms of interaction in
vehicle interiors.
“The human sense of touch employs an extraordinarily complex and
dense network of receptors,” says Oliver Brock, Professor of Robotics
at the Technical University of Berlin. “The quest to replicate them
brings huge technical challenges but also incredible opportunities to
make human-machine interaction far more intuitive. Machines will learn
to ‘grasp’ their surroundings in the most literal sense of the word.”
Real-time machine perception.
To allow safe, comfortable interaction between humans and
machines, an intelligent system must be capable of understanding its
environment in real time and taking decisions based on the resulting
data. As Gregor Schöner, Professor of Autonomous Robotics at Ruhr
University Bochum, explains: “Bio-inspired neural networks provide the
crucial basic ability needed for this, but still often come up against
barriers when used for safety-critical functions.” Experts will lead
discussions on the resulting clash of objectives during the workshop.