Nowadays, a good car doesn’t mean a powerful engine or the number of horsepowers only. Like most modern products, the automotive industry focuses on quality software. Innovations in the automotive industry will be one of the key topics at IT Arena 2019. Speakers from Mercedes-Benz, Renault Digital, ZF, and Audi, will talk about changes in the automotive tech and why cars still don’t fly.

A smartphone can already replace the entire car dashboard. MBition GmbH is developing innovative solutions for Mercedes-Benz cars and other vehicles from Daimler’s holding. At the end of September, Viraj Tank, Mobile Team Lead at MBition GmbH, will explain how to develop a vehicle companion app for the latest Mercedes Benz. MBition developers emphasize instinctive UX, easy navigation, and quick access to user data in the Cloud. Viraj will speak on what features a personally set driving mode includes. A little spoiler: a user’s profile can store the data about temperature, lighting mode, favorite playlist, and speed preferences. Following the latest trends in mobile technologies, MBition GmbH is developing a smart car assistant, which will turn on your favorite track, once you request it.

5 Levels of Autonomous Vehicles

The future of automotive is autopilot. At least, Soma Muthumanickam, Lead Software Architect for Automated Driving at ZF, is confident about it. He talks about 5 different levels of autonomy for self-driving cars. Level 1 and 2 require the driver to be involved in the process. These levels let the vehicle steer and accelerate on its own, but the driver is expected to pay attention to the road and adjust the route when necessary. Such autopilots allow the driver to relax a bit. Level 3 vehicles already offer a system which doesn’t require the driver to intervene in the driving process. The driver can watch a movie, talk on the phone, check emails, etc. can do. The vehicle alerts the driver when their attention is needed. Level 3 vehicles were first released in 2018. Level 4 cars do not require the driver at all. An example: Google’s Waymo, the first driverless taxi in the world, which already operates in a few cities. Such vehicles have built-in geolocators that help them to navigate on their own. However, these geolocators still have limitations: for example, a car with a Chinese geolocator won’t work in Europe.

Level 3 and 4 self-driving cars are already a reality. Level 5 means that the vehicle can drive without a driver anywhere in the world. What happens next? Make sure you visit Soma’s talk on September 27.

There is No Progress Without E-Cars

IT Arena 2019 attendees will have an opportunity to meet Kjell-Arne Wold, Audi’s e-tron Project Manager. Kjell-Arne has an big experience in developing electric cars, before joining Audi, he worked at Tesla for 7 years. Get ready to ask the expert a few tricky questions: which electric car to choose – Tesla or Audi? Can electric cars save the planet? Let us remind you, that Audi is especially proud of its electric car. Audi presented its first fully electric vehicle – e-tron quattro – back in 2018. Especially for the most curious IT Arena attendees, Audi will bring its electric truck – Audi e-tron. At IT Arena, Kjell-Arne Wold will speak on developing an electric crossover, as well as managing the whole process.

The conference attendees will have a chance to test drive the car at the event. The most curious ones will also be able to take a look inside the car – the disassembled vehicle will also be on display at IT Arena.

Big Data in the Automotive Industry 

Mohamed-Achref Maiza, Senior Data Scientist at Renault Digital, who is responsible for developing advanced analytics solutions to support all the automotive core business is also on IT Arena 2019 lineup. His work includes car diagnosis using artificial neural networks, automating quality control with computer vision, record linkage of textual engineering data and competitor analysis based on European customer surveys. Mohamed-Achref will speak on  AI for car diagnostic with Tensorflow and Google Cloud Platform.

See more speakers of IT Arena 2019 here.