When you think of AI in the automotive industry, self-driving cars might be the first thing that comes to mine. However, AI is taking much more of a front seat in changing the automotive industry as a whole, driving innovations in vehicle safety, manufacturing, and customer experience.
Autonomous & AI-Enhanced Vehicles
The headline-grabbing news in the automotive industry focuses on self-driving, autonomous vehicles. The growing strength and capability of AI paired with increasingly sophisticated sensors and cameras are enabling rapid progress in fully autonomous, self-driving vehicles. These AI-driven systems use sensors, cameras, and machine learning algorithms to power self-driving cars, aiming to enhance safety and reduce human error on the road. While so-called “level 5” fully autonomous vehicles are still outside the grasp of the average automobile buyer, increasingly firms such as Waymo are proving real-world viability of autonomous vehicles, even if they still have a human in the loop.
While we’re not there yet with widespread, fully autonomous self-driving vehicles, AI is adding more smarts to today’s human-driven vehicles. AI is increasingly powering Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) features such as lane departure warnings, adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency braking, and parking assistance. These systems use AI to analyze data from cameras, radar, and sensors to assist drivers in making safer decisions, avoiding accidents, and even parking better.
The in-vehicle experience has also gotten a boost from AI. AI is being used to personalize the in-vehicle experience by adjusting settings like seat position, climate control, and infotainment preferences based on the driver’s habits and preferences. AI-powered voice assistants allow drivers to interact with their vehicles using their voice and natural language commands, eliminating distracted driving, enhancing convenience and comfort.
Enhancing Automotive Manufacturing with AI
Automotive manufacturing has many complex processes with many interconnected parts that impact the overall cost and speed of developing and delivering vehicles to market. AI is helping improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the automotive market. Vehicle manufacturers are using AI to accelerate the vehicle design engineering process, leveraging generative AI to generate iterations on design ideas and help create innovative and efficient designs.
AI systems are also being used to simulate and optimize vehicle aerodynamics. These systems can use data and inputs from a variety of sensors to help predict vehicle behavior and structural integrity, leading to lighter, stronger, and more fuel efficient vehicles.
AI is also helping in the manufacturing process itself, especially with quality control. AI systems, especially utilizing computer vision are helping automate quality control, improving assembly line efficiency, and reducing defects. AI-driven robots and vision systems inspect parts, detect defects, and ensure consistent quality during production.
Robots have long been used in vehicle manufacturing, with industrial robots performing many of the tasks that required human labor in the past, from welding to component assembly to painting. AI systems are helping to make even these earlier-generation robots more smart by making increasing use of collaborative robots (“cobots”) that have sensors and cameras, and can respond to changes in the environment to handle more adaptability.
You may have heard in the news not too long ago that a chip shortage had a major impact in the automotive industry because there’s a lot of chips used in today’s modern automobile: from dashboard navigation, safety, and security systems, to engine and climate control and entertainment systems. As supply chains are very tight in the automotive industry, shortages of chips stopped automotive manufacturing for a long time. Available inventory went way down, delivery times went way up, and in many ways the industry is still suffering some of the effects of that.
AI is helping to optimize the supply chain to ensure the availability of critical parts at the right time while minimizing unnecessary inventory and handling product quality issues. AI is helping by predicting demand, optimizing inventory, and managing logistics. AI-driven tools analyze market trends, production schedules, and supplier performance to improve the efficiency of the supply chain, reduce costs, and prevent delays.
AI Improves Automotive Customer Service
When a car breaks down, no one is happy, except the vehicle repair shop. Fortunately AI is coming to help improve the process of getting vehicles serviced and repaired. As in many industries, AI is particularly good at predictive maintenance, using sensor and vehicle diagnostic data to predict when vehicle components are likely to fail. This allows for maintenance to happen before that breakdown occurs. It also helps to optimize the supply chain for parts that might need replacement before those parts become unavailable.
As in all industries, automotive manufacturers and dealers are making use of AI-powered chatbots and natural language interaction systems to improve customer support. Customers can interact with smart chatbots to ask questions about vehicle purchases, schedule service appointments, or help with vehicle usage and troubleshooting. These AI systems provide instant support, improve customer satisfaction, enable iterative question and answers to help with problem resolution, and reduce the workload on human support teams.
So while autonomous vehicles get the top news for AI in the automotive industry, there’s much more widespread use of AI that impacts the automotive industry as a whole.
