BMW Natural Interaction

Once again, the BMW Group is revolutionising how drivers interact with their vehicles: At Mobile World Congress 2019 in Barcelona from 25 – 28 February 2019, the company will present BMW Natural Interaction. The new system combines the most advanced voice command technology available with expanded gesture control and gaze recognition to enable genuine multimodal operation for the first time. The first BMW Natural Interaction functions will be available in the BMW iNEXT from 2021.

Just like in interpersonal dialogue, BMW Natural Interaction allows the driver to use their voice, gestures and gaze at the same time in various combinations to interact with their vehicle. The preferred mode of operation can be selected intuitively, according to the situation and context. Voice commands, gestures and the direction of gaze can be reliably detected by the vehicle, combined and the desired operation executed. This free, multimodal interaction is made possible by speech recognition, optimised sensor technology and context-sensitive analysis of gestures. Through precise detection of hand and finger movements, gesture direction – in addition to gesture type – is also registered for the first time in an extended interaction space that encompasses the driver's entire operating environment. Spoken instructions are registered and processed using Natural Language Understanding. An intelligent learning algorithm, which is constantly being refined, combines and interprets the complex information so that the vehicle can respond accordingly. This creates a multimodal interactive experience geared towards the driver's wishes.