Traffic jam assistant, function that checks for driver drowsiness to be standard in future cars

"There can gesture recognition to control and command the features of the vehicle. Right now the function is actually rolled out and it is a matter of time it will become mass market," said RK Shenoy, Senior Vice President, Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions India.

Driver assistance for parking is already there in a lot of cars costing more than Rs 4 lakh. According to Bosch, the next generation technology will be a step forward in terms of guiding and steering support.

"Car is a third living space. People are in their cars for 3-4 hours every day. This time is used to getting into multimedia and functionality built into one and use the apps in a much better way so. The multimedia becomes more and more smarter," Shenoy said.

Traffic jam assist will be the next by-product of this kind of innovation.  The feature will let users see the integration of parking sensors with a near-range radar. In stop-and-go traffic, this function would ease the load on the driver without manually intervening in acceleration and braking.

Globally, artificial intelligence (AI) has already made its way into automobiles with several tech giants such as Apple and Google trying to make driverless cars a reality. In India, Bosch is using AI during the development cycle of a product to improve its functional electronics.

"In software engineering we have started to use data analytics and AI in a big way to identify and use the feedback from the users to improve the product features," Shenoy said.

Future cars will be run on a cloud-based software mechanism that can be updated over–the-air, like smartphones. Bosch, however, believes the exposure of vehicles to so much technology brings with itself the challenge of cyber security.

"Over-the-air update also brings the issue of cyber security. There is always a risk that with this sort of connectivity it can be misused from outside. Bosch has a separate entity which focuses on cyber security because it gets much more important with more and more automated functions. The Mahindra XUV500 uses our cyber security platform. The software is written in such a way that we guarantee that it is fully secure. Because if you get into the system you can modify a lot of vehicle systems," Shenoy said.

"It is important to make these technologies as mass market as possible to be able to manage it with lot less number of sensors and replace them with intelligence and software which then makes it affordable to bring it to different platforms and give volumes. What we foresee is frugal engineering which we done for powertrain and for ABS and ESP. These are standard features now," he added.