“I’m Casey, your new passenger. Are you ready to get started?” Voice assistants such as Alexa, Siri, Google, Cortana, and Bixby have taken charge of smart households, control lighting and the vacuum cleaner – Bosch now puts the voice assistant behind the wheel. The newly developed technology frees drivers from distractions so that they can concentrate on their essential task. “When drivers get into a modern car, they can sometimes feel like an airplane pilot – buttons, screens, a confusing menu navigation with a thousand sub-menus. Bosch is putting an end to the button chaos in the cockpit. Instead, we turn the voice assistant into a passenger,” says Dr. Dirk Hoheisel, Member of the Board of Management of Robert Bosch GmbH. The assistant, who responds to the name “Casey” the first time the driver gets in, makes driving safer as well as more comfortable. According to a study from the Allianz Center for Technology, German car drivers are frequently distracted when, for instance, they operate the navigation system, adjust the air conditioning, or answer a phone call. This kind of distraction is one of the primary causes of road accidents.
