Gelsinger described the situation as both a massive challenge and enormous opportunity – and the perfect time for Intel to step up to the plate.

“This new era of sustained demand for semiconductors needs bold, big thinking,” said Gelsinger. “As CEO of Intel, I have the great privilege to be in a position to marshal the energies of 116,000 employees and a massive chip-design and manufacturing ecosystem, to meet the demand.”

Intel Investment in Europe

To make his point, Gelsinger reminded the audience that Intel has plans to build at least two new leading-edge semiconductor factories in Europe with plans for future investments that could reach 80 billion euros over the next decade. He also detailed elements of the company’s previously announced IDM 2.0 strategy and shared how those programs will apply specifically for the automotive and mobility industries in the European Union.

Intel Foundry Services, announced in March, is actively engaged in discussions with potential customers in Europe – including automotive companies and their suppliers. Today, the majority of automotive chips are manufactured using legacy process technologies. As automotive applications transition to rely on more high-performance processing, chips are also beginning to migrate to more advanced process technologies. Intel is partnering with leading automotive players and committing significant resources in Europe to help drive this transition around the globe in the coming years. The company announced plans today to establish committed foundry capacity at its fab in Ireland and launch the Intel Foundry Services Accelerator to help automotive chip designers transition to advanced nodes. For this, the company is standing up a new design team and offering both custom and industry-standard intellectual property (IP) to support the unique needs of automotive customers.

Mobileye: From the Garage to the Streets

To emphasize Intel’s commitment to the promising future of self-driving, Gelsinger welcomed Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua via a video segment. Shashua outlined Mobileye’s approach to both the driver assistance and autonomous driving opportunities. He described the sensing configuration, which aims for both scale and safety at all levels of autonomy, and stated that, like Intel, Mobileye shares “the dream of autonomy – anywhere, anytime, for everybody,” and is leading the industry with solutions that will help realize those dreams.

Keynote attendees were treated to the unveiling of Mobileye’s first production AV equipped with the Mobileye Drive self-driving system and bearing the MoovitAV services branding.

“Mobileye is passionate about bringing autonomous vehicles to consumers,” Shashua said. “The new Mobileye AV, accessible through the MoovitAV service, is an important milestone on the way to a driverless world.”

Speaking in front of a largely German audience, Gelsinger emphasized Germany’s first-mover status on AV regulation, citing the law passed earlier this year that enables commercial operation of driverless AV services. The new law enables Mobileye to bring autonomous ride-hailing into operation with Munich-based Sixt SE starting in 2022. Intel and Mobileye believe that autonomous vehicles will take off in places with the right regulatory framework in place, and Germany’s action provides a strong blueprint for other countries to enable the industry to move toward the promise of full autonomy.

IEEE AV Safety Standard in Final Stages

Intel Fellow and Mobileye Vice President of Automotive Standards Jack Weast joined Gelsinger on stage to discuss the recently completed draft of IEEE 2846. Expected to be an approved standard by the end of the year, IEEE 2846 will be the first AV safety standard to address the question,

“How safe is safe enough?” 

Weast explained that IEEE 2846 was initiated following Mobileye’s pioneering Responsibility-Sensitive Safety (RSS) model published in 2017 that formalizes the reasonably foreseeable assumptions humans make every day and that AVs need to make in order to balance risk and usefulness.

“IEEE 2846 will give regulators the essential tool they need to welcome AVs to roads everywhere,” said Weast.

“Electromobility will become a core business for us, and CO 2 – free mobility a growth area. We are turning challenges into opportunities – that’s how we do things at Bosch.”

These growth areas also include automated driving. Driver assistance is the basis for all the levels of automated driving. The company’s healthy position in the areas of electromobility and automated driving is helping it to successfully hold its own in a market environment marked by the Covid crisis, chip shortages, and the even faster transformation of the mobility sphere: the sales revenue of its Mobility Solutions business sector will grow 10 percent this year. Denner added:

“Bosch is a technology leader, and this means business success.”

Electric driving – breakthrough thanks to Bosch high-tech

Electromobility will be the next chapter in the Bosch story. With upfront investments totaling 5 billion euros so far, and the most efficient electrical powertrain solutions in the market, the company is helping it to a breakthrough. This year alone, upfront investments will come to another 700 million euros. Dr. Stefan Hartung, member of the board of management and chairman of the Mobility Solutions business sector, said:

“We are preparing for increasing demand for electric vehicles across the globe. Worldwide, we expect that 60 percent of all newly registered vehicles in 2035 will be electric.”

The company’s aim is to shape the mobility of the future, across the entire range. Denner added:

“It must be climate-friendly, but it also has to be affordable and attractive, not least in light of the ambitious targets set by the EU. Only in this way will people and freight stay mobile in the future as well.”

Bosch is continuing to pursue a technology-neutral approach, offering climate-friendly solutions worldwide for all types of mobility, in line with the requirements of national policy. Bosch is investing not only in battery-electric powertrains, but in fuel-cell powertrains as well, and is involved in customer projects in China, the United States, and Europe. The first trucks featuring Bosch technology are already on the road in China. When driving electrically, recharging plays a decisive role. In Munich, Bosch is premiering a new flexible charging cable for electric cars. It features integrated control and safety technology and adapters for Type 2 and household plugs. Even when recharging at a 230-volt power socket, it can do without the otherwise usual in-cable control box, which means that it weighs less than three kilograms – some 40 percent less than conventional charging cables featuring control boxes.

Autonomous driving – Bosch offers everything from a single source

Domain control units, sensors, artificial intelligence: the Bosch portfolio contains all the elements of automated driving, and the company has some 5,000 engineers working on all its levels. Not least among these elements are enhanced assistance functions that allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel. Bosch is already working with Mercedes-Benz and other partners on deploying this function in the P6 parking garage at Stuttgart airport. The new Mercedes-Benz S-Class is the world’s first production vehicle to feature the technology needed for this. So that driverless vehicles can navigate by smartphone command to a reserved parking bay, Bosch is equipping the parking garage with technology such as fixed-installation video cameras. A further 1,000 parking garages are expected to follow suit by 2025. For all the extra convenience associated with such developments, Bosch sees automated driving above all as something that can make road traffic safer. Bosch pioneered systems ranging from electronic skid control to automatic emergency braking, and continues to pursue the goal of accident-free driving. At the same time, the company is providing innovative software as the basis for the intelligence cars need to have. Denner said:

“Even in the software-dominated mobility of the future, our profound systems expertise will be an advantage: Bosch is equally at home in the world of on-board electronics and of the internet of things, with which cars will be connected.”

Connected driving – Bosch thinks beyond the engine hood

Vehicles are increasingly turning into internet nodes. In the future, software will be just as important as powertrain performance or efficiency. Bosch is actively shaping this change. And the company is well positioned for this: nearly half the R&D associates in the Mobility Solutions busines sector are software engineers. Even the bicycle is becoming part of the internet, as evidenced by the new Bosch eBike Flow app. For example, it enables the software in components to be updated. In addition, software integration is becoming more and more important: here as well, Bosch has the necessary expertise. Take infotainment computers: by 2025, their computing power and software complexity will double. Bosch ensures that the various software modules work reliably with each other. When it comes to connectivity, moreover, the company’s ideas go far beyond vehicles.

Since April this year, Mercedes-Benz models featuring the MBUX voice assistant have also been a command center for Bosch smart-home applications. From the driver’s seat, a voice command is sufficient to contact the smart home and switch off the lights, open blinds, and control the heating. All this shows that Bosch technology is paving the way to mobility that is sustainable, safe, and exciting.

Sheeva.AI’s API platform serves as a programmatic interface to monitor and utilize real-time vehicle location to automate payments, trigger driver-centric contextual events, and streamline consumption of vehicle services such as fueling, EV charging, parking, tolls, and curbside retail. Taking a software-first and open API philosophy, Sheeva.AI created a technology to support any mobility related service through its open API platform.

The core differentiator of Sheeva.AI’s technology is its patented location algorithm, enabling the platform to determine the vehicle’s real-time geolocation precisely enough to identify the car’s location down to the gas pump, parking space, EV charging station, toll or drive-thru lane, etc.

Evgeny Klochikhin, CEO and co-Founder of Sheeva.AI, noted:

“The mobile revolution only happened after open easy access to location-based services (aka GPS in every phone) became ubiquitous. Every car by 2025 will have the same capability:

Pervasive connectivity,

Embedded GPS, and

API-based Payments, meaning no need for complex architectures.

We at Sheeva.AI are the first to enable these services for Chipsets, OEMs, and Merchants via RESTful APIs. We deliver our solution with little to no architecture changes on behalf of our partners’ IT stacks – more will be revealed when we officially exit stealth next month.“

This level of accurate location enables the last-mile automation of services for the vehicle. Applications for this open API include curbside retail pick-up, EV Charging, paying tolls, even getting your favorite drive-thru food.

“The office in Sofia is quite an important developing center for Uber”- Ivan Atanasov comments. “Everyday the company makes 16 million travels and every month 98 million of our platform’s users rely on us. What we do touches real people and makes life better for millions of other people who rely on the platform to support their families.”

In his new role, Ivan will take responsibility for the innovative development of the products, created in Sofia, as well as for the enlargement of the engineering team.

“Sofia becoming one of the two main technological Uber centers in Europe is my main goal, as well as increasing the number of colleagues here to 250 in the next 3 years.” – Ivan Atanasov shares.

Uber Engineering Sofia was founded in 2014 and was one of the first technological offices of the company outside of San Francisco.

Here in Bulgaria, the Uber team is operating FinTech services, supporting payments and guaranteeing legality. There are 80 people who are currently working here. We are planning to increase their number with 20 more by the end of the year, and at least 50 more in 2022.

Just like Kentaro, the occupational therapist, Eiichi Tanaka, who works at the hospital, is a keen gamer. Tanaka commented:

“We currently have about 100 patients in our neuromuscular rehabilitation centre who have been hospitalized for a long time. And 70 to 80% of them play computer games using smartphones, PCs and consoles.”

He has been giving courage to disabled people to play games since 1998. But there was a problem related to the fact that console controllers used to be designed only for players who could use fingers on both hands to move characters, attack enemies, talk and so on.

Tanaka and his colleagues would modify controllers with accessories to meet the needs and abilities of individual patients. But customizing controllers this way wasn’t at all easy or cheap.

That changed in 2018 with the debut of the Xbox Adaptive Controller, which has a large panel designed for easy operation by people with disabilities, as well as multiple ports for connection of additional buttons and other accessories. It exemplifies inclusive design principles like “recognize exclusion” “learn from diversity” and “solve for one, extend to many”.

The staff and patients of Hadikko Medical Center made a video about its impact with the aim to show how Xbox Adaptive Controllers can be used to play games from the perspective of people with disabilities.

Due to COVID-19, people involved in the use of Xbox Adaptive Controllers in Tokyo were unable to visit the centre to help with the video’s production. That’s why Microsoft Teams was used to connect staff in Hokkaido and Tokyo to develop the story and confirm production details. They wanted the video to be useful to people all around the world, so production staff also used Microsoft Translator and other tools in order to create English subtitles.

The video presents some of the characteristics of the Xbox Adaptive Controller, showing how people with limited mobility are able to use them.

Yoshinari shares he wants other people with disabilities to be aware that there are sports in the world they would be able to enjoy. He hopes that everyone who sees this video would understand how disabled people are able to play computer games just like everybody else.

Yoshinari is looking forward to connecting with more and more people from all around the world through games.