Automotive Engineering - February 2024 - 10

TECHNOLOGY REPORT
Cerence Chat Pro, which uses a smart
arbitration mechanism in VW's voice
command software to distinguish between
three types of queries and route
them to the right service for a response.
The embedded system handles simple
functionalities that do not need a connection
to function, like adjusting the
temperature or the radio. For higherlevel
tasks, like providing real-time
weather data, the system uses cloud
services provided by Cerence.
Everything else - " the queries that the
system today cannot tackle, " as Vania La
Rocca, Cerence's director of product
operations, told SAE Media - goes to
the new integrated third-party large language
model (LLM), in this case,
ChatGPT. Cerence enabled the chat service
on the cloud side without requiring
any changes to the embedded software.
" The goal is to reduce as much as
possible the cases where the system
will answer, 'I don't know how to do
that,' " La Rocca said.
At CES, the companies showed that
IDA can understand natural speech, but
it wasn't a perfect score. During an onstage
demo, the car misunderstood the
cheeky " Who makes the best cars? " as
" Who makes the best cases? " and returned
a list of places to buy protection
for a smartphone.
IDA is limited by legal problems, as
well, particularly when it comes to how
the AI responds to location-based
questions. Asking " What's the weather
here? " will work, for example, but maybe
not " What's that castle on my left? "
The reason lies in privacy rules. For
weather data, for example, VW and
Cerence have an agreement so the car
can share its location with Cerence,
which then finds out if it's raining or
VW's IDA chatbot
can speak answers
to questions about
local landmarks,
but only in some
circumstances.
not. But VW and Cerence can't give
ChatGPT this location information so it
can then determine where " here " is to
identify the castle.
" Today, due to legal reasons we are not
VW's IDA chatbot
uses ChatGPT to
understand some
spoken commands
that the previous
system could not
parse. By default, it
responds to " Hello
Ida " or Hello ID. "
10 February 2024
allowed to forward the position of the
customer to ChatGPT, " VW's head of innovation
and system architecture, Axel
Heinrich, told SAE Media. " But if you're
asking, 'Hey, IDA, I have reached
Hamburg, and I have two more hours
before my next appointment. Can you
give me a recommendation?' You will get
the answer because you have included
Hamburg as a destination question. "
IDA has four built-in privacy levels that
an owner can select, ranging from zero
personal data to the most open, which
shares location, destination and some
anonymized details. But even if the driver
gives consent to use localization data,
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
VW used an ID.7 as the demo
vehicle for IDA at CES 2024.
ALL IMAGES: SEBASTIAN BLANCO
Automotive Engineering - February 2024

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