Honda Cars India Limited (HCIL) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with IIT Delhi to enhance Honda CI (Cooperative Intelligence). Honda CI is an AI technology designed to facilitate better interaction and cooperation between machines and humans. It achieves this by understanding the environment, scenes, and intentions, enabling smoother communication and collaborative actions.
An agreement was signed by Prof. Preeti Ranjan Panda, Dean of Corporate Relations, and Prof. Naresh Bhatnagar, Dean of Research and Development, from IIT Delhi, along with Mr. Udit Kumar, Senior Vice President & Director at HCIL. The signing ceremony took place in the presence of Prof. Rangan Banerjee, Director of IIT Delhi, and Mr. Takuya Tsumura, President & CEO of Honda Cars India Limited (HCIL).
IIT Delhi hosts a significant number of skilled researchers and engineers. Under the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), engineers from HCIL and Honda R&D Co., Ltd., a subsidiary focused on research and development within Honda, will collaborate with researchers at IIT Delhi. Their joint efforts aim to advance the foundational technologies of Cooperative Intelligence (CI), focusing on future applications such as technologies to reduce traffic accidents and enable automated driving.
Prof. Preeti Ranjan Panda, Dean, of Corporate Relations, IIT Delhi, said, “The mobility industry is experiencing significant change, driven by a growing demand for sustainable and functional products powered by AI technologies that are shaping its future. This partnership aims to leverage IIT Delhi's advanced research and Honda’s expertise in practical applications to fast-track innovation and create solutions that benefit both customers and society across a wide range of applications.”
Honda, actively involved in the research and development of Cooperative Intelligence (CI), is presently conducting technology demonstrations. These demonstrations serve as a proof of concept for their CI-powered micro-mobility vehicle or robot in Joso City, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan.
Aiming to achieve further advancement of CI, Honda and IIT Delhi have set joint research themes such as recognition of the surrounding environment and cultivation of cooperative behaviour, and will conduct joint research and development while utilizing cutting-edge AI technologies.
Moreover, for each research theme, Honda associates and professors of IIT Delhi will jointly engage with the Institute’s students for planning, designing, developing and testing technologies, which work beyond the confines of the laboratory and thereby proceed with the research and development more flexibly and with a high degree of freedom. This will enable Honda and IIT Delhi to work more flexibly with a deeper exchange of academic and industry insights.
As part of their collaborative research efforts, Honda and IIT Delhi are aiming to validate driving assistance and automated driving technologies in the outskirts of Delhi. This initiative involves testing these technologies within Delhi’s traffic conditions. By refining the foundational technologies of Cooperative Intelligence (CI), Honda and IIT Delhi aspire to apply them to future driver assistance and automated driving systems across different global regions, including India.