A Preview of Bosch’s IoT Projects on Display at CES 2019

Self-Driving Vehicle Testing in San Jose: At CES, Bosch will share details about its collaboration with the city of San Jose and Daimler to debut an autonomous ride-sharing service in the self-proclaimed capital of Silicon Valley. Bosch and Daimler will use self-driving Mercedes S-Class vehicles in a defined region of San Jose. Bosch and Daimler hope to help lay the groundwork for the debut of fully autonomous vehicles within the next 10 years.

More-Natural Voice Control for HVAC Systems: One of the most convenient features smart speakers offer is the ability to adjust the temperature without having to make a trip to the thermostat. But to be able to use such systems, a user needs to first determine what the temperature is and then alter it accordingly. Bosch has developed a chatbot known as .aino that enables users to say commands such as “I feel a little cold” versus “I feel very cold.” The .aino chatbot also offers advice on how to save energy.

AI-Enabled Robotic Lawn Mowing: Lawn mowing can be a time-consuming task — especially if you live the suburbs or the country. To help people free up time, Bosch developed its Indego line of robo-mowers. The company announced it is using machine learning to make the robots more accurate at identifying obstacles in the lawn and capable of adapting over time based on the specific maintenance needs for the yard in question. The latest mower in the line, known as the Indego S+, also supports Amazon Alexa voice commands.

Bringing More Functionality to Wearables: For all of the good that wearable devices have done, helping convince the inactive to go for walks and fitness buffs to push themselves further, many wearable devices remain fairly primitive in the sensor department. Some, for instance, may mistake a motorcycle ride for an extremely brisk and implausibly fast running session.

To help bring new capabilities to wearables, Bosch has developed its BMI270 sensor, which offers not just the ability to count steps, but the potential to recognize gestures and determine when a user is jogging, cycling, standing and so forth. In addition, the sensor can detect arm motions and wrist bends, which could enable new types of gesture-based inputs via wearables software known as Wear OS from Google.