Kia to introduce emotion recognition AI technology at CES 2019

Kia Motors to introduce Real-time Emotion Adaptive Driving System at CES 2019

While it is sad to think about it, current advancements in the modern automotive world keeps on suggesting that we’re on our way to seeing driverless cars in the future. It’s a revolutionary breakthrough but we might need a few extra years for that idea to sink in. For Kia, it’s already laid out and decided to conceptualize something that’s even more advanced than the idea of driverless cars alone.

Kia Motors’ vision of post-autonomous era led to the concept named as the Real-time Emotion Adaptive Driving (R.E.A.D.) System. The ambitious vision is under the South Korean brand’s ‘Space of Emotive Driving’, which is dedicated to an era where autonomous driving is the standard technology in mobility. It will be unveiled at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show in January as the first technology developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab’s Affective Computing and Kia Motors collaboration.

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In a nutshell, the R.E.A.D. System is designed to optimize and personalize a vehicle cabin area through an analyzation of the driver’s emotional state. It’s an artificial intelligence-based bio-signal recognition technology and, mind you, it does everything real-time. By monitoring the driver’s emotional status, the system will be able to alter the interior environment. If you think about it, it’s kind of like a non-transforming version of Bumblebee; if it senses a heartbreak, it plays that ‘70s hit by the American band Player. Okay, Kia’s concept doesn’t actually do that, well, we don’t know for now but you get it, right?

“We have developed R.E.A.D. System to create an interactive future mobility in-cabin space by converging cutting edge vehicle control technology and AI-based emotional intelligence. Consequently, R.E.A.D. System will enable continuous communication between drivers and vehicles through the unspoken language of ‘emotional feeling’, thereby providing an optimized human senses-oriented space for drivers in real-time.”

Albert Biermann
President and Head of Research & Development Division of Kia Motors

Meanwhile, Kia Motors also has plans for the pre-autonomous driving era with a concept tapping renewable energy on vehicles. Kia, together with Hyundai, is planning on utilizing solar energy in their future cars. On top of all these, the South Korean carmaker is also outspoken regarding its electrification plans, which aims to manufacture at least 16 green models by 2025.