At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference 2020 (WAIC 2020) held online this year, Human Horizons announces its strategic partnership with Microsoft to jointly develop an on-board AI assistant, the HiPhiGo, for HiPhi vehicles. Human Horizons is an innovative mobility company with HiPhi, a subsidiary brand, providing premium smart all-electric vehicles. Supporting the partnership, HiPhi and Microsoft are in discussion to establish a smart computing lab. This will be the latest addition to Human Horizons’ ‘3 Smart’ strategic blueprint (Smart Vehicle, Smart Road, and Smart City) enhancing its next-generation connected vehicles.
Combining different AI-driven applications to come together in a user-friendly manner is a challenge, which is where the partnership with Microsoft comes into play.
“Human Horizons has experience in design, engineering, intelligent systems and more, and has been at the forefront of innovation, with a comprehensive blueprint and successful practice in the integrated development of the vehicle, road, and city ecosystem,” says Dr. Yongdong Wang, global senior Vice President of Microsoft (Asia) Internet Engineering.
“The strategic partnership with Microsoft will accelerate the development of our onboard digital AI assistant, HiPhiGo,” says Ding Lei, CEO and founder of Human Horizons and HiPhi. “HiPhi, as a future-oriented innovative mobility company, and Microsoft, with its unique technological expertise, are outstandingly well-matched. Together, we will play a key role in shaping the future of automotive-mobility.”
Dr. Yongdong Wang shared, “We are thrilled that HiPhi has chosen Microsoft. Human Horizons has profound experience in vehicle design, engineering, and vehicle intelligent systems. As Human Horizons and Microsoft join forces, we look forward to supporting the company with cutting edge AI technologies for the development of the vehicle, road and city ecosystem, and to reimagine the driving experience for people everywhere, together.”
Using the onboard AI assistant, HiPhi will significantly optimize the connections between its vehicles, cloud-based platform, and user-centric services within the “vehicle-road-city” ecosystem. Microsoft has extensive technical expertise in computer voice and vision, natural language processing, and search engine database. This includes Microsoft’s text to speech technology, based on deep neural networks, that is comparable to human speech. The application of such technologies will provide seamless and engaging human-machine interaction.
The HiPhiGo AI assistant will also allow HiPhi to leverage mobility services across its entire portfolio, providing new services and solutions such as in-car consumer experiences, telematics, and the ability to securely connect data between the car and its occupants.
AI is an inevitable process of the further development of new-generation information technology (IT), also a global-concerned direction of deep integration of IT and economic and social development.
In the future, the solutions developed through this partnership will be rolled out to other HiPhi products, building the foundation for all customer-centric services of the brand. HiPhi 1, the first product of the HiPhi brand, will reach small volume production by the end of 2020 and official deliveries in 2021.
