BMW to Help Drivers with AI-Like ILENA System

Years of research were put into developing systems that would allow drivers to better their driving skills with the aid of the car itself. But now, as the moment in which such systems draws ever closer, are we really ready for them? When it comes to your car, your ride, the statement of your manhood, this extension of your ego, would you let a computer take over?

What would you say if something named like a girl would be able to anticipate what you want from your car and make it happen? If it could give you more power when you need it, learn the route your taking to go to work and basically drive itself, but deprive you of any real control?

ILENA, the system under development from BMW, tries to answers to all these questions. Unlike what you might think when you first hear its name, you should know ILENA stands for Intelligent Learning Navigation developed to make your life easier. And less exciting.

This artificial intelligence wannabe is a project developed by BMW to help out lazy people. If you get sick of driving (in which case we wonder why did you buy the damn car in the first place), you can have ILENA learn your driving habits so that the vehicle (not you) becomes more efficient.

ILENA is fitted with a camera that allows it to identify regular routes, road gradients, curves and braking points, thethruthaboutcars.com reported. A very useful feature if you get struck by a memory disabilitating disease and keep forgetting the way home

It can subtract power from the air conditioning if you are approaching a point ILENA determined you regularly use to accelerate or select a later shifting point for the automatic transmission. This comes as a reaction to repetitive actions one usually takes on that particular road and is meant to help the driver and save fuel.

“Using all this information, the navigation system generates an electronic horizon which helps in energy management,” Andreas Winkler, ILENA project leader was quoted as saying by the aforementioned source. When combined with BMW's Efficient Dynamics, ILENA can save up to 10 percent in fuel consumption. It can even make sure the battery of a hybrid vehicle is fully charged before entering an urban area.

Fuel saving aside, we really feel ILENA is here to steal our of our most basic pleasure: driving. Choose to have it in your car when it becomes available and your car will become a bus, a simple means of transportation. And you are just a passenger...