Las Vegas. The in-car digital experience of both
the present day and the future is the dominant theme of the BMW
Group’s presence at CES 2024. New infotainment products for the
current BMW model portfolio will be shown at the event. At the same
time, the BMW Group is demonstrating innovative development projects
that offer a glimpse into the future. Visitors can teleoperate a BMW
iX and guide it around the Silver Lot on the exhibition site,
discover as a passenger the potential offered by augmented reality
glasses during a journey and experience a new generative AI
capability of the BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant powered by the
Alexa large language model (LLM), enabling quick answers and how-to
responses on vehicle features.
“BMW is synonymous with both the ultimate driving machine and
the ultimate digital experience,” says Frank Weber, Member of the
Board of Management responsible for BMW Group Development. “At the
CES we are showing more content, more customisation and more gaming.
This is all underpinned by our powerful, in-house developed BMW
Operating System. And we will take a look to the future, of course,
with perfectly integrated augmented reality and strong, reliable
artificial intelligence at the interaction between human and machine.”
BMW Operating System 9 makes it possible: new gaming
experiences from the ConnectedDrive Store in 2024.
The optional “BMW Digital Premium” offering allows
BMW customers with BMW Operating System 9 to access an extended
range of products from the BMW ConnectedDrive Store. As well as
on-demand functions for the vehicle, the store also offers an
ever-evolving selection of third-party apps in the categories music
& audio, news & magazines and gaming for the infotainment
system. More games are now being made available via this channel for
in-car enjoyment. And occupants will also be able to play using
proper gaming controllers in future. BMW is
presenting this new form of gaming experience for the first time at
CES 2024. For example, “Beach Buggy Racing 2” offers customers an
action-packed racing game that evokes memories of the great console
classics. Two players in the vehicle can compete against one another
in split-screen mode using their gaming controllers. Any standard
gaming controller with Bluetooth capability can be connected to the
infotainment system in just a few steps. The controller link-up will
be made available over the air for BMW Operating System 9 during 2024.
The AirConsole App already lets BMW customers play single and
multiplayer games in their car. The “casual games” offered are easy
to pick up for anyone; the user’s smartphone serves as a controller,
allowing simple control of gameplay that is quick to learn.
Additions are constantly being made to the choice of games in the
in-car AirConsole App.
BMW Digital Premium is optionally available for models with
BMW Operating System 9 and can be obtained from the ConnectedDrive
Store either online, in the MyBMW App or directly from the car. BMW
Digital Premium allows customers to enjoy in-car use of all the apps
available in their country as well as covering the necessary data
usage. And the package offers more besides, including enhanced
navigation functions and added customisation options.
Top entertainment – with the Video App in BMW Operating
Systems 8.5 and 9.
In addition to the BMW Theatre Screen with Amazon
Fire TV built-in in the rear compartment of the BMW 7 Series, BMW
customers are now able to watch a variety of video content on the
central display too*. The already very succesful TiVo operating
system for smart TVs was optimised for in-car video streaming in the
space of just a few months by developers from the BMW Group working
together with XPERI Inc. The result is the integration of the DTS
AutoStage Video Service powered by TiVo. The entertainment programme
comprises both live channels and on-demand media libraries covering
the categories news, sport, entertainment for kids, movies and TV series.
First launched in the new BMW 5 Series, the platform will now be
rolled out to further executive and luxury models over the air**.
Since the end of 2023, customers driving compact models with BMW
Operating System 9 have also been able to access the Video App with
BMW Digital Premium. These will be followed by further models over
the course of 2024, such as the BMW X2 and all models in the new
MINI family.
The Video App is currently accessible in the USA, UK, South
Korea, France, Italy, Germany and Spain, and will soon be coming to
Japan. A number of portals are available internationally, including
Pluto TV, Bloomberg, TED, Yahoo! and Chili. These are accompanied by
market-specific streaming services:
- Germany: JOYN, ZDF, tagesschau, Deutsche Welle.
- Italy: RaiPlay
- France: TF1
- USA: Tubi, Gusto TV, Journy
- Japan: Hulu Japan, NHK Plus, NTV NEWS NNN, TVer, WOWOW
The portfolio of video streaming platforms will keep expanding and
will be gradually rolled out to other countries.
Ready for the wearables of the future – enhanced driving
experience with XREAL Air 2 augmented reality glasses.
The CES show also sees the BMW Group demonstrate
for the first time how augmented reality (AR) glasses are set to
enrich the driving experience in future. Visitors can test the
possible uses of AR glasses for themselves on a drive through Las
Vegas. Wearing the glasses, they can see how navigation
instructions, hazard warnings, entertainment content, information on
charging stations and supporting visualisations in parking
situations are embedded perfectly into the real-world environment by
the “XREAL Air 2”. AR and mixed reality (MR) devices will become
increasingly popular in the next few years, thanks to technological
advances and entry-level models that are more affordable for
customers. In future, AR and MR devices will be able to offer both
drivers and passengers enhanced information and enjoyable
experiences to complement the displays fitted in the vehicle.
The BMW Group has been working on the development of AR/MR
technology since 2008 and investigating possible applications for
head-mounted displays in research projects. The BMW engineers,
together with their development partners, have now succeeded in
showing stable augmented reality and mixed reality content to
passengers in a dynamically moving vehicle for the first time. The
displayed image remains securely embedded in the environment even in
challenging driving situations, such as when turning, driving over
large bumps or accelerating. To achieve this, the tracking system of
the AR/MR device in question has to be linked to the vehicle’s
sensor data.
The BMW Group has consistently built up its pool of experience
with AR/MR devices over the years and presented the results to the
public. These include the initial MINI
Augmented Vision project (2015), the collaboration with Meta
Reality Labs (2022 & 2023), the ConnectedRide
Smartglasses from BMW Motorrad and the M
Mixed Reality Driving Experience. The Augmented View function
in current BMW and MINI models shows drivers a live video stream on
the display that is augmented with additional information for
optimum guidance when using the navigation system. In the area of
highly innovative, vehicle-related XR applications, the BMW Group
has filed patents for almost 70 inventions from its developers in
recent years.
“Thanks to the recent research collaborations with Meta
Reality Labs and XREAL, we have made considerable progress in our
preparations for integrating external XR devices into our driving
experience in production models. We are proud to be leading the way
here and are well prepared to offer our customers breathtaking XR
experiences in the future,” says Peter Lehnert, Vice President
Research, New Technologies and Innovations Digital Car at the BMW Group.
“We are thrilled at the prospect of being able to digitally
embellish the real world by combining car tech with AR tech,”
comments Peng Jin, co-founder of XREAL. “And this could lead to
entirely new experiences while travelling by car and open up new
potential for AR tech.”
The BMW Group has successfully carried out pioneering work on
digital technologies in the past – such as vehicle access using the
BMW Digital Key – and has been a driving force behind the
industry-wide standardisation of such innovations. The company is
open to collaboration with further partners in the area of AR/MR
too. The goal here is to establish an industry standard for
connecting the CE industry’s XR devices with vehicles.
Development demo: BMW voice assistant becomes the ultimate
vehicle expert with the help of the Alexa Large Language Model (LLM).
At CES, the BMW Group and Amazon showcase voice
assistant LLM capabilities based on a current development
project that the companies are working on in preparation for a
potential series rollout. This makes the BMW
Intelligent Personal Assistant the ultimate vehicle expert thanks to
generative AI that is powered by the Alexa LLM. At CES, visitors
experience how the voice assistant provides quick instructions and
answers about vehicle functions in a much more human,
conversation-like manner, while at the same time being able to
control some vehicle functions.
The BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant has been using
artificial intelligence for speech processing for a long time and
this demo is the latest proof point of the continued innovation BMW
and its partners are bringing to customers. Complex processing
capabilities, which enable human-like interactions and dialogs, have
not yet been integrated into BMW series vehicles. Such capabilities
are now made possible by LLMs, which are AI models that are designed
to process human language at a high level and generate responses
accordingly. The BMW Group is also taking careful steps to build a
safe and trusted experience for customers, and continues to test and
iterate these LLM capabilities over time with its partners.
Since the introduction of the first BMW Intelligent Personal
Assistant in 2018, language interaction has been an essential part
of BMW iDrive. Today, the voice assistant gives customers control
over many vehicle functions so that they can keep their hands on the
wheel and their eyes on the road. Leveraging Amazon’s Alexa Custom
Assistant — a solution that is based on Alexa technology and enables
companies to create their own customized voice assistant — the
next-generation of the BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant will soon
become more powerful over the course of the year in vehicles with
BMW Operating System 9.
Joint development project with Valeo paves the way for
teleoperated valet parking.
The BMW Group and Valeo have entered a strategic
partnership to work on the joint development of next-generation
automated Level 4 parking solutions. This includes the development
of solutions for automated valet parking (AVP). Here, the customer
leaves their vehicle in a designated drop-off area. The vehicle then
searches for a vacant parking space itself, manoeuvres into the
space and later exits it again, and can even drive back to the
pick-up area for collection by the driver. Either an autonomous
driving system or a teleoperated valet system can be used as the
underlying technology for this.
CES 2024 visitors will have the opportunity to try out
teleoperated valet parking for themselves. Teleoperation offers
complete control in situations that could be very challenging for
fully autonomous systems, such as in complex or unfamiliar environments.
The teleoperator uses sophisticated technology and live camera
images to guide and move the vehicle so that it can be parked and
retrieved again in a carefully controlled manner. Possible future
applications for this technology could include parking at events, at
airports or in the logistics sector.
* In conjunction with ConnectedDrive Professional in models with
BMW Operating System 8.5 or in conjunction with BMW Digital
Premium with BMW Operating System 9.
** BMW 7 Series; BMW iX produced from 03/23; BMW X5, BMW X6, BMW
X7, BMW X5 M, BMW X6 M produced from 04/23; BMW XM produced from 08/23.
