Development and implementation of an automotive virtual assistant

This thesis aims to the study of Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPAs) applied in the automotive field, proposing and testing an implementation. In the first section, IPAs are studied from the first implementations to the current state of art, understanding how they became so popular, with an overview on the advances in speech and voice technologies. Then an automotive personal assistant is designed and implemented, integrating some of the most popular technologies and expanding their functionalities. The proposed approach is based on Alexa, one of the leader virtual assistant AI on the market; new capabilities, called skills, can be developed and customized to offer new voice experiences to the speaker and, in this case, the driver. Alexa will offer vehicle diagnostic and control features, profiles management and other services to showcase all the possibilities. The skill creation process is explained in detail with the definition of the interaction model, the voice-user interface, and the logic handling back-end code. The aim is to create a natural voice interaction, letting Alexa take some decisions, proposing to the driver assistance and letting the speaker talk in a more conversational way: for this, two non-canonical approach are proposed and implemented. Then, this thesis covers also the interaction between Alexa and the vehicle, with an infotainment system on board based on Android Automotive. After an overview on this operating system, an Android app, integrating the Alexa Auto SDK, is expanded to include a car status panel, providing and intuitive graphical interface through which both the driver and Alexa can interact. Since the Alexa Auto SDK capabilities are limited, a communication system based on DynamoDB, a NoSQL database provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) is implemented, so that the two systems can communicate and exchange more complex data. Finally, in the last section of this thesis, the proper functioning of all the components are tested on an Automotive Development Platform, the SA8155P ADP air, with Android Automotive installed, the results of this project are shown and possible future implementations are discussed.