Audi unveils robot co-driver

Meet Aida, the brainchild of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), being developed with Audi possibly soon to appear in an A4 near you. Aida, an acronym of Affective Intelligent Driving Agent, is an in-car robot able to 'learn' things about you and your driving thanks to sensors inside and outside the car.

The idea is that Aida will, within a week or two, become a driving companion, learning where home is, where work is, where you like to shop, what you like to do and, bizarrely, what sort of mood you're in. As Professor Cynthia Breazeal, director of the Personal Robots Group at MIT, puts it: "AIDA [will] read the driver's mood from facial expression and other cues and respond in a socially appropriate and informative way."

Mounted on the dashboard, Aida (whose eyes look suspiciously like a row of Audi daytime running lights) will appear sympathetic if you look sad, or jolly if you look happy. Like a good satnav system, Aida will also suggest alternative routes when there are traffic problems, can also tell you where to get fuel when you're running low and how to drive in the most fuel efficient way relevant to the driving conditions at the time.

It's currently a research project, but as a working model has already been built there's no reason why we won't see it on an Audi options list in the near future.

Mark Nichol