Volkswagen appoints expert in 'deep thinking' to lead artificial intelligence team

Professor Patrick van der Smagt has been appointed to lead Volkswagen Group’s artificial intelligence (AI) at the German car company’s Data Lab in Munich. An Associate Professor at Technische Universität München, he is an expert in deep learning and robotics.

Until now AI has mainly been applied in autonomous driving and robotics. This includes, among other things, pattern recognition based on image and sensor data, intelligent decision-making based on AI algorithms and processing very diverse data types.

The Volkswagen Group regards AI as a key technology not just the fields of autonomous driving and in production, but also a means of speeding up corporate processes. The new field of “robotic enterprise” involves the use of auto-adaptive algorithms in corporate functions and processes such as those found in development, production, sales, finance, and quality assurance. Prof. van der Smagt will be focusing in particular on this area.

Johann Jungwirth, chief digital officer at the Volkswagen Group, said: “First-class competence in the field of AI is an essential prerequisite for safeguarding the future. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are emerging as key technologies in the automotive industry.”

The Data Lab was set up in 2014 and specialises in AI, automotive data science and machine learning. It is developing IT solutions for big data and the Internet of Things in collaboration with universities and technology partners. Its solutions are made available to all brands in the Volkswagen Group 

Dr. Martin Hofmann, chief information officer at the Volkswagen Group, said: “Top specialists from Volkswagen, industry partners and the academic world, as well as start-ups, jointly develop and test forward-looking ideas in our labs, working in an environment similar to Silicon Valley.”