在底特律举办的WCX17 – SAE 2017全球汽车年会的收官日中，来自福特（Ford）、通用（GM）、菲亚特克莱斯勒 (FCA)、大陆（Continental）和电装（Denso）的顶级技术专家齐聚“领导人圆桌会议”环节，共同讨论了人工智能、网络安全解决方案以及下一代人机界面（HMI）等热门话题。

随着工程师开始寻找为自动驾驶汽车系统赋予更多功能的方式方法，人工智能(AI)技术开始逐渐出现在人们的视野之中。通用汽车首席技术官兼通用风投部门总裁Jon Lauckner解释说，人工智能可以很好地完成某些特定任务，比如协助自动驾驶汽车进行目标检测及分类等。“但要想让人工智能拥有与人类大脑同等的智慧仍非常遥远，甚至十几岁人类大脑的水平也很难企及。”

他补充说，“如果我们希望让人工智能成为自动驾驶汽车系统的‘大脑’，无论它将以何种形式进行工作，我们的研究范围都必须超越神经网络领域。”

大陆集团北美总裁Jeffrey Klei指出，目前这家一级供应商共有约100名工程师和科学家正在从事人工智能方面的研究。他表示，“人工智能在我们的各个业务领域均有发挥作用的空间，这并非仅与自动驾驶技术开发有关。”

网络安全一直是贯穿WCX17年会的热门话题，在场的技术领袖对此也有自己的看法。福特研发与先进技术工程副总裁Ken Washington博士表示，“毫无疑问，网络安全问题将会继续升级，成为一个汽车行业必须着手解决的问题。”他同时指出，可以从计算机与航空领域吸取一些经验教训。

通用汽车的Lauckner认为，汽车行业面临的网络安全挑战与IT公司不同，主要任务在于保护数据元素。但他解释说，这里要保护的数据元素并不是发送给各种车辆系统的指令，“而是消息，因为我们没有时间去验证CAN总线上的每一条消息，要知道消息验证是需要时间的。”

在自动驾驶的应用场景中，这些消息的传递是以毫秒为单位的。“需要再次重申，我们并没有很多时间去做非常复杂的消息认证，”Lauckner补充说，“我认为这里有机会出现一些创新系统，解决汽车面临的挑战。”

专家们还讨论了下一代汽车人机界面的发展。“这完全取决于消费者，” Washington表示说，“只有仔细观察客户，否则你不可能知道客户想要什么。”他指出，互联网和iPhone的出现可能是受到技术浪潮的推动，但产品和技术的不断改良，必然是来源于对用户体验的深刻关注与理解。

“事实上，这就是看你如何把各种技术结合在一起，打造一种客户会喜欢的体验。我认为，整个行业都需要在这个问题上继续努力。”他解释道。大陆集团的Klei宣称，HMI应该是一种直观的用户功能。

“如今整个汽车行业都已经明白，我们不能将车内系统全部都升级为触屏设备，有些情况下用户就是需要有一些触觉反馈，”他说，“为了行业的健康发展，我们一定要把HMI搞好，确保用户不会对这种技术留下不好的第一印象。”

“汽车行业正在呼吁，希望能吸引全世界最优秀的人才来解决这些相关工程挑战，”FCA北美产品开发副总裁Phil Jansen表示，“我们的工作是为地球上的60亿人口提供个人交通运输服务。让我们满怀兴奋的前进，而不要因为害怕而退缩，因为这是一个非常有趣的时代。”

本次“领导人圆桌会议”的主持人由SAE 2017年度主席 Doug Patton担任，同时他也是电装公司执行副总裁兼CTO。

The role of artificial intelligence, the search for cyber security solutions, and the next level of human-machine interface in vehicles were discussed in a Leadership Roundtable of top technologists from Ford, GM, FCA, Continental and Denso, on the final day of SAE's WCX17 conference in Detroit.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the industry’s attention as engineers look over the horizon for more capability in autonomous vehicle systems. Jon Lauckner, General Motors CTO and President of GM Ventures, explained that AI is a good option for certain tasks, like getting an autonomous vehicle to do object detection and classification. “But to have the power of a human brain—even a teenager, for example—it’s very far away from that capability.”

He added, “We need to go well beyond neural networks if we’re going to deploy AI as the ‘central brain’ in any sort of an autonomous vehicle system.”

Tier 1 supplier Continental employs about 100 engineers and scientists currently working on AI, noted Jeffrey Klei, the company's North America president. “There’s room for AI in all areas of business, not just for the development of automated driving,” he said.

Cyber security was a sizzling topic throughout WCX17, and the technology leaders had their say. "Make no mistake, cyber security is going to continue to escalate as an issue that the automotive industry must address,” said Ken Washington, Ph.D, Ford's Vice President of Research and Advanced Engineering. He noted that there are cyber security lessons to be learned from the computing and aerospace industries.

According to GM's Lauckner, the auto industry’s cyber security challenges are different than those of enterprise IT, which is primarily focused on protecting data elements. But he explained that it’s not data elements sending commands to various vehicle systems. “It’s a message. And we don’t have time to authenticate each and every message that’s on a CAN bus system; authentication takes clock time,” Lauckner noted.

In an automated driving scenario, those messages are spinning around in milliseconds. “Again, you don’t have a lot of time to be doing very sophisticated message authentications,” Lauckner said, adding, “I think there are opportunities for innovations with regard to the particular systems we have on board vehicles.”

The experts also discussed next-generation human-machine interface. “It’s about the consumer,” said Washington. “You don’t know what the customer wants unless you observe them.” He noted that the Internet and Apple iPhone happened because of a technology-push, and that refinements to products and technologies happen by watching the experiences of users.

“It’s really about how you stitch it together to create an experience that customers will love. I think we need to get much better at that as an industry,” he explained. Klei of Continental asserted that HMI should be viewed by the user as an intuitive feature.

“We’ve all learned as an industry that we can’t have all touch-pad surfaces; there must be some haptic feedback in certain circumstances,” he said. “I think as an industry we have to do a better job of getting the HMI right so that the customer’s first experience is a good one.”

Attracting the world's best talent to solve these and other engineering challenges, "the automotive sector is calling," noted Phil Jansen, FCA's Vice President Product Development for NAFTA. “We’re in the business of providing personal transportation for six billion people on this planet. Walk away excited. Don’t walk away fearful because this is a very interesting time,” he told the audience.

The discussion was moderated by Doug Patton, Executive Vice President and CTO for Denso, and the 2017 SAE International President and Chair of the Board.

Author: Kami Buchholz
Source: SAE Automotive Engineering Magazine