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January 11, 2024

TomTom brings AI-powered, talking cars to life with Azure

TomTom changed how drivers reached their destinations with its navigation solution and has recognized that today’s drivers want more than the best route. Therefore, TomTom created Digital Cockpit, an immersive in-car infotainment system. Automobile manufacturers can customize it to the look and feel of their brand, cutting costs by up to 80% with a more efficient, sustainable approach. TomTom is using Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Cosmos DB, and Azure Kubernetes Service for seamless control and conversations by the drivers.

TomTom

“Our goal is to create conversational infotainment that will delight consumers and exceed the smartphone experience.”

Paul Hesen, Vice President of Product Management, TomTom Group

Cars that talk—and talking to cars—isn’t a new idea. It has intrigued people for decades and has repeatedly shown up in popular culture. In a 1960s television situation comedy that featured a man’s close relationship with his vehicle, the car in question was the reincarnation of the leading character’s mother. In the early 1980s, television writers envisioned an independently intelligent, self-aware supercar that conversed with its human partner. Since many people spend so much time in their cars, it’s only natural that the fantasy of fruitful conversation would persist. With voice-enabled navigation, intelligent voice assistants such as Siri and Cortana, and so many other smart solutions now widely available, this is no longer a fantasy.

TomTom changed the way drivers reached their destinations. Its navigation system freed drivers and passengers from folding and unfolding maps, arguing over which way to turn, and stopping to ask for directions. TomTom is expertly positioned to recognize that today's drivers want to do more than follow the best route—and to assist them with easy-to-use and well-integrated solutions. They want, for example, to ask their car system to make dinner reservations after their last meeting, find the most appropriate charging station and a good lunch on their route, and control opening windows, changing the temperature, and other vehicle functions by voice. 

The ubiquity of smartphones and software-defined cars plus the availability of 5G networks and the rise of electric vehicles have helped to transform the driving experience. Drivers expect to be able to use in-vehicle technology with the same ease and reach of their cellphones to gain information and participate in entertainment. 

Early in-vehicle systems have mostly failed to deliver a seamless, safe user experience equivalent to that of a smartphone. “We recognize that, rather than building such systems themselves, automakers need partners who can provide them with turnkey, immersive infotainment solutions,” says Paul Hesen, Vice President of Product Management at TomTom. “Our goal is to create conversational infotainment that will delight consumers and exceed the smartphone experience. Car makers can take it from there to add their own branding and customization.”

Revolutionizing the driver experience

The partnership between TomTom and Microsoft to power location services in Azure Maps started in 2016 and later grew to include mapping data and services for Microsoft first-party maps. Since selecting Azure as its preferred cloud in 2019, TomTom has fully committed to it, including extensive use of its analytics capabilities, global scalability and availability, security, data privacy, and protection.  

It was a natural evolution of the relationship for the two companies to collaborate on automotive solutions, especially on driving innovation for generative-AI-powered solutions. “Together,” says Hesen, “we have developed TomTom Orbis Maps, which are built on TomTom’s AI-based mapping platform, and TomTom Digital Cockpit, an in-vehicle digital infotainment solution with cloud analytics.“

TomTom Orbis Maps answer the rising demand for map data for navigation, automated driving, delivery, electric vehicles, fleet management, and more. Map data needs to be current and come with more features, more coverage, and higher location accuracy. It should also be easy to use. Building on top of an open and standardized base map supports data contributions adding up instead of duplicating each other. Orbis is architected as an AI-based, layered, versioned, quality-controlled, continuous integration/continuous delivery platform built on Microsoft Azure. 

Microsoft's advancements in AI and the TomTom Orbis Maps power the TomTom Digital Cockpit, a fully integrated, AI-powered, conversational automotive assistant that enables more sophisticated voice interaction with infotainment, location search, and vehicle command systems. TomTom Digital Cockpit is enhanced by Microsoft Azure with Azure OpenAI Service embedded. Azure Cosmos DB and Azure Kubernetes Service are also essential to the full-fledged architecture. 

“We use Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Cosmos DB, and Azure Kubernetes Service because we’ve identified these as key services that facilitate the acceleration of AI apps. Azure OpenAI Service gives us a model that helps create and maintain the infrastructure, so we do not have to create a reasoning engine ourselves,” says Ivan Diaz, Principal Staff Engineer for AI Services at TomTom.  “Data is the glue that holds everything together. Azure Cosmos DB as a globally distributed, scalable database enables the system to retain the previous customer conversations and preferences, allowing it to keep learning and become tailored to the driver. Its low-latency response times can bring data and apps closer to the users. And Azure Kubernetes Service brings together our architecture, accelerating service deployment and scaling’.” TomTom Digital Cockpit also uses Azure AI Services to supply natural-sounding voices with text to speech and to accurately transcribe spoken audio to text.

Changing the way we drive

With TomTom Digital Cockpit, drivers can communicate in a natural way with their vehicle and ask the AI-powered assistant—a generative-AI chatbot that is voice and audio focused—to navigate to a certain location, find specific stops along their route, and vocally control onboard systems to, for instance, turn up the temperature, open windows, or change radio stations. All with a single interaction. They can accomplish work tasks using the assistant while they wait for their electric vehicle to complete recharging.

Thanks to using Azure OpenAI Service, the development group no longer required up to 10 people. Instead, a three-person team took the prototype of Digital Cockpit into a tangible model, freeing developers to focus on other activities. Response times for driver queries to the infotainment system, originally 12 seconds, diminished over a few months to as little as 2.5 seconds. TomTom is finding that the models get faster and cheaper over time. Anecdotal feedback from customers has been overwhelmingly positive. “For instance, one customer described Digital Cockpit as mind-altering technology,” says Hesen.

In evaluating 300 different scenarios, TomTom found its assistant was able to understand and answer 95% of complex driver requests. Following its implementation in a 20-user demonstration environment, TomTom Digital Cockpit including Azure OpenAI is now being made available to car manufacturers. These original equipment manufacturers can then customize this immersive system to the look and feel of the brand, cutting costs by up to 80 percent with a more efficient, sustainable approach. The voice assistant can be integrated into other automotive infotainment systems, enabling automotive manufacturers to accelerate time-to-market on a customizable interface while retaining ownership of their branding and the driver experience.   

Find out more about TomTom Group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and LinkedIn.

“We use Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Cosmos DB, and Azure Kubernetes Service because we’ve identified these as key services that facilitate the acceleration of AI apps.”

Ivan Diaz, Principal Staff Engineer for AI Services, TomTom Group

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