Cover news reporter Huang Mingjun Zhang Fuchao
On January 5, the 2022 North American Consumer Electronics Show kicked off in Las Vegas, USA, and at this year's CES, Mercedes-Benz unveiled its latest development, the VISION EQXX concept car. In the afternoon of the same day, Cover News was invited to interview Ms. Jasmin Eichler, head of the future technology research department of Mercedes-Benz AG.
Yasmin Eichler, head of future technology research at Mercedes-Benz AG
"A large part of the vision EQXX concept's outstanding energy efficiency performance is achieved through hardware. However, software also plays a crucial role. Yasmin Eichler told Cover News that software drive has always been one of Mercedes-Benz's key areas of development and continuous improvement, and it is also one of the important transformation directions of Mercedes-Benz, which has begun to lead the transformation of software-defined cars.
In fact, in addition to the achievements of the vision EQXX concept car released this time with a pure electric endurance of more than 1000 kilometers and a wind resistance coefficient of 0.17, its research and development process also makes extensive use of cutting-edge digital tools such as virtual reality and augmented reality, such as Mercedes-Benz engineers who use an innovative information processing method called neuromorphic computing to increase the wake-up speed of "Hello, Mercedes-Benz" to 5-10 times that of traditional voice control functions, and further land "software-defined cars" The development concept.
Regarding the concept of "software-defined cars", Yasmin Eichler gave an example that the VISION EQXX concept car uses neuromorphic computing processing, which can imitate the logic of the human brain and can imitate some important sensory functions of humans. Now, Mercedes-Benz has applied this technology to speech commands and speech recognition, and can achieve a very precise understanding of language. It is conceivable that in the future, neuromorphic computing may support more other functions, such as visual sensing for the interpretation and judgment of signals inside and even outside the car.
The VISION EQXX Concept is a technology exploration project that uses a lot of innovative technologies. Jasmin eichler said that through continuous technology research and development and continuous efforts, we hope to see these innovative technologies used in more production models after 2024. The VISION EQXX concept car uses a large 47.5-inch display, which carries a large number of intelligent human-computer interaction tasks. Jasmine Eichler admits that the integrated screen is one of the core elements of the vision EQXX concept car interior, this screen only provides the driver and co-pilot passengers with the required information, Mercedes-Benz uses a lot of artificial intelligence technology, so that the owner feels that the car machine system is a smart helper, and will not play a role in interference, thereby creating a better user experience.
"For the VISION EQXX concept car, we combined existing software technology with innovative software developed specifically for this concept car. For some special use scenarios of Chinese users, we are also constantly expanding the scope of research and deepening research and development efforts. Regarding the future of Mercedes-Benz's software initiatives, Jasmine Eichler told Cover News that Mercedes-Benz product development adheres to the principle of continuity, and mercedes-Benz will continue to strengthen the R&D team capabilities in the software field in Germany, China and around the world, as well as to carry out cooperation between various R&D teams to ensure that excellent technology can always be applied both in the production stage and throughout the life cycle of the vehicle.