Mercedes funds training in AI and automated driving
Mercedes-Benz is funding research into generative AI and driverless cars at Stanford School of Engineering.
The Mercedes funding is for 15 graduate students at Stanford to conduct hands-on, real-world research in generative AI and its application in the automotive industry
This includes 3D imaging research at the University of California San Diego to tap into the state-of-the-art institutional research resources at the Autonomous Vehicle Laboratory.
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Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America has earmarked a six-month funding initiative aimed at advancing AI research and its potential for the in-car passenger experience and autonomous driving.
The academic challenge presented to the students is related to the MBUX Virtual Assistant announced at CES 2024, for which Mercedes-Benz has used advanced software and generative AI to create an even more natural and intuitive relationship with the car.
For instance, the software can offer helpful suggestions based on learned behaviour and situational context. Divided into three teams, Stanford students are formulating project ideas with expansive scope, exploring the full spectrum of possibilities with AI, from optimising the productivity of customers’ daily commutes to addressing parking challenges and refining a personalised in-car voice assistant powered by fine-tuned large language models (LLM).
“Research Cooperation is an essential part of Mercedes-Benz’s innovation strategy. Given the rapid pace of development in AI technology, close collaboration with the scientific community is essential. The partnership with Stanford and the University of California San Diego underlines our commitment to nurturing a new generation of talents in the tech industry. As a pioneer in automated driving technology, we look forward to the insights and advances that will emerge from this collaboration,” said Markus Schäfer, Member of the Board of Management of Mercedes-Benz Group AG, Chief Technology Officer, Development & Procurement
“We’re grateful to MBRDNA for their support that provides students with experiential learning opportunities, particularly as they relate to the possibilities that AI enables in the automotive sector,” said Jay Borenstein, Lecturer for Stanford’s Project-Based Design, Innovation and Development course.
The Autonomous Vehicle Laboratory (AVL) focuses on perception and fusion for automated driving, particularly on 3D scene reconstruction from camera images, which could ultimately contribute to the safety features of the AV systems. The objective of this project is to initiate an effort building on prior work from Christensen’s lab and integrate it with a real-time 4D Neural Radiance Fields (NERFs) model to build a model segmented into semantically meaningful regions.
“We are very excited to join forces with Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America to expand our work on dynamic scene models for autonomous driving. This is a great opportunity for us to broaden our approach and also build a new alliance,” said Hendrik Christensen, Institute Director and University of California San Diego Computer Science Professor
Mercedes-Benz was the first automotive company to build a research and development division in Silicon Valley and this has forged research collaborations with universities and key researchers across the country that have led to joint publications and recruitment opportunities.
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