Affectiva and Nuance to offer assistance

US company Affectiva plans to develop a joint automotive assistant which detects driver distraction and drowsiness and voices recommendations such as navigating to a coffee shop. The solution is intended to align its dialogue to a motorist’s emotional state based on facial and verbal expressions. The integrated solution will combine the Affectiva Automotive AI solution with UK-based Nuance Communications’ Dragon Drive platform. Affectiva Automotive AI measures facial expressions and emotions such as ange
December 6, 2018 Read time: 2 mins
US company Affectiva plans to develop a joint automotive assistant which detects driver distraction and drowsiness and voices recommendations such as navigating to a coffee shop. The solution is intended to align its dialogue to a motorist’s emotional state based on facial and verbal expressions.


The integrated solution will combine the Affectiva Automotive AI solution with UK-based Nuance Communications’ Dragon Drive platform.

Affectiva Automotive AI measures facial expressions and emotions such as anger and surprise as well as verbal expressions in real time. It also displays icons which indicate drowsiness such as yawning, eye closure and blink rates and physical or mental distraction.Through the partnership, Dragon Drive will enable the in-car assistant to interact with passengers via emotional and cognitive state detection. It currently facilitates this correspondence through gesture, touch, gaze detection and voice recognition powered by natural language understanding.

Stefan Ortmanns, executive vice president and general manager, Nuance Automotive, says these additional modes of interaction will help its OEM partners develop automotive assistants which can ensure the safety and efficiency of connected and autonomous cars.

In the future, the automotive assistant may also be able to take control of semi-autonomous vehicles if the driver displays signs of physical or mental distraction.

Detection, Monitoring & Machine Vision

Related Content

  • March 26, 2021
    TomTom offers hybrid navigation solution 
    Drivers can interact with TomTom’s navigation via Amazon Alexa
    Read More
  • May 10, 2019
    SafeRide: it’s time to act on cyberattacks
    Cyber threats are increasing rapidly and conventional security measures are unable to keep up. Ben Spencer talks to SafeRide’s Gil Reiter about what OEMs can do now As more vehicles become connected, so the potential threats to their security increase. Gil Reiter, vice president of product management for security firm SafeRide, says the biggest ‘attack surface’ for connected cars is their internet connectivity - and the in-vehicle applications that use the internet connection. “The most vulnerable co
    Read More
  • March 17, 2014
    Proposed system to take guesswork out of choosing a freeway lane
    A fledgling advanced lane management assist system can take the guesswork out of selecting the right lane on a congested freeway, as its inventor Robert Gordon explains. As drivers we’ve all done it and control room staff see it all the time – motorists on congested freeways switching into what they perceive is a faster lane, only to come to a halt a few moments later and watch vehicles in the other lanes continue to move past. Now, by re-analysing readily available data in an advanced lane management as
    Read More
  • March 7, 2014
    Daimler and Volvo take lead in European implementation of V2V
    New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Strategic Analysis of the European Market for V2V and V2I Communication Systems, expects more than 40 per cent of vehicles to use vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communication technologies by 2030. Daimler and Volvo are anticipated to lead the implementation of V2V communication systems among vehicle original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) across Europe. Vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communication systems have also been finding significant traction in Europe, especially in
    Read More

Highlighted Content