AI@Porsche Coding Days: How We Solve Real-Life Problems with AI

Around 50 colleagues from Porsche, MHP, Lufthansa and many other companies spent two days working on solutions to enable colleagues and customers to benefit from AI insights. All projects were great but in the end, the participants had to decide on a winner: Visionary Posture AI, a tool to improve back health.

What helps against the tech neck? Posture at the desk has become a central challenge in the age of knowledge workers — and in the corona crisis, due to work from many ergonomically questionable home offices, the issue has even worsened. Luckily, modern technologies of the 21st-century can help to solve 21st-century problems.

This project was one of eight projects, that were developed during the Porsche AI Coding Days. Within three days, each team drafted a concept and developed a prototype, which aimed to solve a real-life problem that occurred somewhere in the Porsche cosmos. With our coding days, we want to demonstrate the potential of data and AI at Porsche and further increase enthusiasm for the topic of artificial intelligence within the company. At the end, the Visionary Posture AI project team took the victory in a vote of all of the approximately 200 participants of the closing event of the two-day AI@Porsche hackathon. The hackathon offered Porsche AG departments the opportunity to have new data- and AI-based solutions developed in their specific areas and solve problems that occur in real life. With our coding days, we want to demonstrate the potential of data and AI at Porsche and further increase enthusiasm for the topic of artificial intelligence within the company.

The solution of the winning team combines sensor technology and AI to create a program that provides guidance for quick posture exercises in short time slots and can reveal how healthy your back posture is. The program was developed in just two days by colleagues from Porsche and Lufthansa Industry Solutions with the support of Sensoryx sensors. Congratulations to the whole team, Nadin-Katrin Apel, David Bethge, Ahmad Ahmadov, Julian Gimbel, Alymbek Sadybakasov, Julia Lemos Müller and Christian Schellnegger!

Developing AI prototypes that create a positive impact on customers and colleagues

The project is exemplary for all eight solutions presented by their project teams on the final day of the AI@Porsche Hackathon because they all showed how creative, effective and solution-oriented the concentrated strength of many colleagues can be — even in a short amount of time. Everyone was a winner: Innovative prototypes and first models were presented on five questions and topics straight from the day-to-day Porsche universe — which are now being further developed and tested.

The project teams were working on these five topics during those 48 hours:

• How to use AI-methods to solve the “cold start” problems in recommendation algorithms and to improve sales planning by predicting the option take rates by similarity detection.
• What conclusions can be drawn from the data pool of the 40,000 measured values of a vehicle analysis protocol with the help of AI? How can customers benefit from these findings?
• How does individual user behaviour affect the operational stability of the installed parts in a car and how can product improvements be made even more closely in line with customer requirements?
• How can we use present and absence data of our employees as well as external factors to forecast how many employees will be in the plant on a certain day?
• How can we develop a computer vision algorithm, which captures the position/ posture of the Porsche employees from depth/ infrared images?

The result of all projects: A first tangible step towards solving these issues.

Collaboration is key for future innovations

However, with all the coding, data and hard work, there was also plenty of fun to be had — even if only at a distance due to the coronavirus: Remote challenges helped to connect the developers at Porsche with coders from various other companies and organizations.

At Porsche, we believe that AI is a game-changer. But the complex problems of the future can only be solved together — which is why we feel proud to welcome so many smart and open-minded people to our hackathon. We are working hard on establishing a culture of collaboration and open innovation as Mattias Ulbrich, CIO of Porsche and CEO of Porsche Digital recently wrote.

We encourage creativity and responsibility and foster innovation, constantly asking how we can support our technical experts. — Mattias Ulbrich, CIO of Porsche AG and CEO of Porsche Digital.

It was great to see the progress of our transformation from a traditional automotive manufacturer to a software-enabled tech player in action during these two days!

We would like to thank again our partners that joined the virtual hackathon: Porsche, MHP, Porsche Engineering and many more.

About this publication: Where innovation meets tradition. There’s more to Porsche than sports cars — we’re tackling new challenges, develop digital products and think digital with a focus on the customer. On our Medium blog, we tell these stories. It’s about our #nextvisions, smart technologies and the people that drive our digital journey. Please follow us on Twitter (Porsche Digital, Next Visions), Instagram (Porsche Digital, Next Visions, Porsche Newsroom) and LinkedIn (Porsche AG, Porsche Digital) for more.