Integration of Alexa Skill with ŠKODA

Automotive solutions are part of Professional Services Business Unit, where the most prominent specialists deal with the development of mobile applications, backend, software and hardware, as well as writing test tools aimed at testing the connectivity compliance.

Nowadays, the automotive industry is among the fastest and most rapidly growing sectors. Cars are becomming the ultimate mobile devices. With the development of new technologies and the progressive process of automation and digitalisation of services, the automotive industry also faced the need to constantly improve its products. An Individual vehicle is no longer a single component and is becoming part of an interconnected network. Trends in connectivity, electricity and mobility have (r)evolved to customer centric approach, allowing to create new monetization schemes. Comarch, together with its Automotive Division, aims to improve the quality car users life in the near future by creating new solutions in this area. Comarch offers, among others, the development of software such as: applications, backend, integration of external service providers, or software for audio and multimedia systems. One of the leading brands that decided to implement Automotive solutions is ŠKODA.

For our client, in 2017 we undertook the creation and integration of the Amazon Alexa voice asisstant with the car. It was the first integration of Amazon Alexa voice assistant within a car in the European Union and the second one worldwide. Our next achievement was the integration of the Alexa Echo speaker into ŠKODA cars. The whole thing is a product of our client called Alexa Skill.

Until recently, voice assistants were associated more with smart home environment than with car ecosystems. Our goal, and our customer’s need, was to integrate the voice assistants with cars, and enable car owners to communicate with their vehicles using remote access (in this case, using the Alexa Echo home speaker or the Alexa smartphone app).

This integration allowed car users to use a series of commands and inquiries about the vehicle, from their own home. The integration process, as well as the solutions we have introduced and the benefits for car users and facilities are described in a Case Study prepared by us under the following link: https://www.comarch.com/iot-ecosystem/case-study-skoda-connect-alexa-skill-with-comarch/.

You will find out how the process of integration of our client's solution (created by us) with the automotive ecosystem went, what idea guided the above described solutions and what facilities await drivers of cars integrated with Alexa. In addition to benefits for car users, you will also read about the benefits that ŠKODA has gained from implementing the solutions described above and how the usage process works in practice