'OK Google- is my car locked?' Mercedes-Benz takes next step with its vehicle-specific Google assistant
Mercedes-Benz today announced the integration of the voice-activated personal assistant Google Home - making it possible to interact with the Mercedes-Benz vehicle from home. The feature will be available to Mercedes-Benz customers in 2017.
With this integration, Google Home users can 'talk' to their Mercedes-Benz cars after triggering it with “Ok Google." The phrase “Let me talk to my Mercedes” then loads the car-specific assistant. That has a slightly different voice to Google’s Assistant, but more importantly it recognizes a number of vehicle-specific requests.
For instance, you can ask “is my car locked?” and, after a moments processing, Google Home will report back on the security status. It’s also possible to ask for the current mileage, and when the next service is due. Perhaps more useful for day-to-day, you can use Google Home to send an address to the car, which will be waiting for you when you next get in, Slashgear reports
It’s part of Mercedes-Benz’s overall vision of the car evolving with artificial intelligence. The automaker demonstrated its adaptive infotainment system which, rather than expecting users to go digging through menus for their pick of settings for navigation, music, and HVAC, would use AI to predict what might be the likely requests. The top three possibilities would be served up on the central display.
"In the last decade, we've seen a range of benefits when smart technology is combined with transportation," said Sajjad Khan, vice president of digital vehicle & mobility at Daimler. "This newest integration shows just how intelligent the car of the future will be, and we plan to roll out more applications as the year progresses that will make daily life even more accessible and convenient."
"Streamlining the customer's digital lifestyle by connecting the car to the IoT has been a rapid evolution during the last few years. With using machine learning and artificial intelligence this endeavor becomes even more efficient. It extends customers' existing behavior on their mobile phone seamlessly into Mercedes-Benz vehicles."