SEAT, a member of the Volkswagen Group and one of Europe’s biggest car manufacturers, along with IBM announced the development of a new solution designed to transform driving in cities.
Announced the day after SEAT presented its concept car Minimó promising to revolutionise urban mobility, ‘Mobility Advisor’ uses IBM Watson AI to help urban citizens make informed decisions about their daily transportation options including cars, scooters, bikes and public transport.
Currently under development and designed to run as a mobile app on 4G/5G networks, ‘Mobility Advisor’ uses IBM Watson Assistant to provide users with a conversational interface to plan and optimise routes and suggest the most suitable transportation options.
With IBM Watson Machine Learning, ‘Mobility Advisor’ can learn a user’s preferences and make personalised recommendations for how best to complete a journey.
Connected to the IBM Cloud, it dynamically adapts to changing conditions by taking into account weather forecasts, traffic reports and things happening in the city that day.
It incorporates the user’s appointments and historical data about previous choices in order to suggest the best modes of transportation each time – even if that means leaving the car behind, walking, or using one of SEAT’s e-Kick scooters for the part of the journey.
“Traffic congestion and environmental challenges are putting huge pressure on cities to transform,” said Jordi Caus, SEAT’s Head of New Urban Mobility Concepts.
“At SEAT we are leading the way by working with innovative cities and technology companies to come up with solutions to make mobility easier and more efficient.
“With its advanced cloud and AI technologies, IBM is helping us to innovate new approaches to mobility that will transform our business strategy while improving the lives of people living in urban areas.”
SEAT’s R&D Mobility team will continue working with IBM technicians on the evolution of Mobility Advisor proof of concept and its different potential applications.
Together with XMOBA, SEAT’s independent company which tests new solutions that contribute to better mobility, SEAT will analyse the future integration of Mobility Advisor with Justmoove, the collaborative mobility solutions platform which the company already offers to its customers.
On IBM’s side, the project is being implemented by Viewnext, an IBM subsidiary in Spain.
