ADAS have a problem that no one wants to admit — and Bosch says it has the solution

Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) have become a common presence in modern cars, but they do not always win the trust of those who drive. Excessive alerts, corrections considered unnecessary and frequent interventions lead many drivers to disable features designed precisely for safety.

During a connectivity event held in Berlin, Bosch presented its “hyper-personalization” strategy, which uses artificial intelligence to adapt assistance systems to the behavior and preferences of each driver. The premise is straightforward: the less intrusive the system, the greater the chance that it will stay on.

SEE ALSO:

• Toyota Hilux gets accessory to improve its stability in curves
• Does the bolt stroke at the gas pump exist? Police and fact-checkers disagree
• Two seconds: the time this mother had to save her daughter from a runaway Mercedes

According to the company, most of the current ADAS are calibrated for extreme situations, which results in corrections and warnings seen as dispensable in everyday use. The effect is paradoxical: drivers start to ignore – or simply turn off – functions important to their own safety. Worse: those who get used to ignoring warnings may end up more exposed than if they never had them.

One of the examples is the lane keeping assistant. According to Holger Breuing, project leader at Bosch, the system should be more rigorous in higher-risk situations, such as heavy traffic in daylight, and more forgiving in low-complexity scenarios, such as an empty highway at dawn. A similar concept applies to adaptive cruise control, which would learn the driver’s preferences — advance faster or keep a longer distance — and adjust its behavior without manual configuration.

The approach integrates what Bosch calls an “AI cockpit,” in which vehicle software analyzes usage patterns in the background to personalize assistance systems. The company makes a point of marking a limit: technology is not to be confused with autonomous driving. In the words of Stefan Hartung, chairman of the board of management of Bosch, the car remains “four wheels and body”; Software doesn’t replace hardware, it just makes it smarter.