Virtual Co-pilot for a Comfortable Journey 

The inter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny Con­ti­nen­tal is devel­op­ing a vir­tu­al trav­el assis­tant that makes dri­ving much more com­fort­able. The eTravel.Companion is an intel­li­gent sys­tem that informs the car user like an inter­ac­tive radio sta­tion. Whether it’s rec­om­men­da­tions for free park­ing spaces or cheap gas sta­tions, warn­ings about tire pres­sure loss or impend­ing severe weath­er, indi­vid­ual sports news or tips for cul­tur­al events — the eTravel.Companion speaks up proac­tive­ly, but only to the extent need­ed, and helps dri­vers make their trip as pleas­ant as pos­si­ble. The spe­cial fea­ture of the inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy: The eTravel.Companion is linked to the smart­phone and thus to the user, not to a sin­gle auto­mo­bile. This means that all ser­vice ben­e­fits can also be used in dif­fer­ent vehi­cles — a major advan­tage when car-shar­ing or book­ing a rental car, for exam­ple. 

Thanks to arti­fi­cial­ly intel­li­gent algo­rithms, the sys­tem is con­stant­ly learn­ing and can offer indi­vid­u­al­ly tai­lored sup­port for many facets of trav­el. Anoth­er inno­va­tion: The voice-based eTravel.Companion ini­ti­ates every com­mu­ni­ca­tion itself — and only if it offers real added val­ue for a smooth trip. In prac­ti­cal terms, this looks like this, for exam­ple: In the car, the music of a playlist stored in the smart­phone plays while the nav­i­ga­tion device guides the vehi­cle to its des­ti­na­tion. The eTravel.Companion briefly dims the music and announces: “Sor­ry for dis­turb­ing you, but all park­ing spaces at the des­ti­na­tion are occu­pied. Should I choose a route to anoth­er park­ing garage near­by? There is also a free e‑scooter from your con­tract provider avail­able there, which you can use to get to your des­ti­na­tion in three min­utes.“ 

A major advan­tage of Con­ti­nen­tal’s new tech­nol­o­gy is a flex­i­ble cloud-based appli­ca­tion. This means that the indi­vid­ual mobil­i­ty assis­tants of car man­u­fac­tur­ers or car shar­ing and rental car providers — park­ing, traf­fic flow, charg­ing sta­tion apps and many more — can be seam­less­ly inte­grat­ed. It access­es all rel­e­vant data and makes it avail­able to the end user via voice assis­tance and web radio func­tion. In prin­ci­ple, the new eTravel.Companion works like an all-con­nect­ing matrix, enabling a new, par­tic­u­lar­ly attrac­tive and stress-free inter­ac­tion between vehi­cle and driver.

Intelligent interaction between vehicle and driver 

Thanks to the assis­tant, the dri­ver’s inter­ac­tion with his car becomes even more intu­itive and con­ve­nient. Because this is absolute­ly nec­es­sary: The flow of infor­ma­tion into the car is con­stant­ly increas­ing. Dri­vers are con­front­ed with more and more indi­ca­tions from the cock­pit instru­ments or infor­ma­tion from the info­tain­ment sys­tems. Added to this are a wide vari­ety of assis­tance apps, mobil­i­ty appli­ca­tions and ser­vice sys­tems. Intel­li­gent solu­tions for the inter­ac­tion of dri­vers with their cars are there­fore par­tic­u­lar­ly in demand — and above all for the man­age­ment, pro­cess­ing and, not least, the seam­less pro­vi­sion of data from a wide range of sources. 

“One of the biggest chal­lenges in the auto­mo­tive indus­try today is to devel­op intel­li­gent con­cepts for human-machine inter­faces. Solu­tions that enhance the dri­ving expe­ri­ence and allow dri­vers to inter­act with their vehi­cles eas­i­ly and effec­tive­ly — with­out dis­tract­ing them from the traf­fic. Cloud-based ser­vice tech­nolo­gies are the key to nat­ur­al and safe com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the vehi­cle, and beyond. With the new eTravel.Companion, we are tak­ing this cru­cial step fur­ther: we are cou­pling the assis­tant with the user’s smart­phone, not only with the vehi­cle. This means that all the ben­e­fits can also be used inde­pen­dent­ly of a spe­cif­ic vehi­cle.” 

- Dr. Karsten Michels, Head of Advanced Research & Engi­neer­ing at Continental

This brings the advan­tage that the eTravel.Companion can be inte­grat­ed into exist­ing info­tain­ment sys­tems from car man­u­fac­tur­ers or appli­ca­tion offer­ings from mobil­i­ty ser­vice providers. For exam­ple, the sys­tem gives car man­u­fac­tur­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves from the com­pe­ti­tion through vehi­cle advan­tages oth­er than design, engine per­for­mance or bat­tery range.

Intel­li­gent appli­ca­tion solu­tions also offer great oppor­tu­ni­ties as a tool for cus­tomer loy­al­ty, for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with a brand. Such new worlds of expe­ri­ence in the vehi­cle will be an impor­tant dif­fer­en­tia­tor in the future. The tech­nol­o­gy is cur­rent­ly under­go­ing inten­sive field test­ing with a major auto­mo­tive com­pa­ny and will be ready for use and pro­duc­tion in the near future.