Jul 25, 2018

July 25, 2018 - Written By Daniel Golightly Autonomous vehicle startup Renovo and the A.I. experts at Speak With Me are teaming up on a new in-vehicle driver-to-machine experience. More directly, Speak With Me is bringing its emotionally-aware artificial intelligence to the former company’s AWare-branded ecosystem. That’s Renovo’s operating system specifically designed for use with autonomous vehicles and vehicle fleets. The joint venture will result in an interactive user-facing assistant designed for cross-compatibility with any vehicle running Renovo’s AWare. In short, that will enable partners and fleet vehicles already using AWare to access and present drivers or riders with a voice-controlled experience in-vehicle. Since it will work with any vehicle and be designed to integrate with any third-party software in the AWare ecosystem, consistency should be bolstered and development times shortened. For Speak With Me, the decision to partner with Renovo comes down to AWare’s “robust infrastructure” and Renovo’s ability to scale deployment at a commercial level. The growing number of vehicles and vehicle platforms utilizing Renovo’s AWare, according to Speak With Me Founder and CEO Ajan Juneja, will provide the company with a way to reach more passengers more quickly. That will presumably enable the company to strengthen its brand in the space while also providing end users a meaningful A.I. platform for interacting with their vehicle. Simultaneously, the Renovo ecosystem already includes services tied in with the automated driving system managed by the OS itself, including route management systems. The company also offers solutions for passenger management, fleet operations, remote teleoperation, commerce, and advertising. Integrating a voice-interactive platform will give those systems a new way to be interacted with. That will be similar to a smart home hub or smart speaker but with an emotionally aware A.I. that can read and interact with users more comprehensively . It can also learn to recognize users by voice and work when disconnected from data services using past interactions and contextual cues. With regard to when the system will become available, Renovo’s announcement claims that it already is. There’s no mention of cost or availability but it is presumably available anywhere the company’s AWare platform is. Moreover, it can be added to any vehicle that is already using that platform. Moving forward, the company also suggests that even more innovative solutions are in the works for the automated mobility platform, although the company is not giving away any details with regard to what those might be.