Microsoft Corporation Plans To Let You Control Your Cars With Cortana-The Virtual Assistant

Microsoft Corporation publicized its plan to develop ‘connected cars’, at TechDays, a forum in Taipei, Taiwan on September 16th. This idea on which the company is building upon is to allow drivers to control ‘Cortana- Microsoft’s voice controlled assistant’ which takes care of everything in the car, while they sit back comfortably behind the wheel and enjoy the ride.

The company has already designed a prototype of the idea as informed by Samuel Shen, the chief operating officer of Microsoft Asia-Pacific Research and Development Group. Unfortunately there was not any public display of the first designed model.

The most remarkable feature which the company’s executive revealed about the Cortana-enabled car is that it will have the navigation system integrated with the windscreen. The driver just needs to ask the voice-assistant to show a specific location or to make a reservation and a list of the preferred locations will pop-up on the windscreen for the driver to choose from.

Back in 2014, a somewhat similar car concept was announced by Microsoft but there was no voice control feature in the earlier prototype. The feature basically allowed the display of the Windows Phone to take over the display panel in the car. The reason given by the company for not launching such products earlier is the high cost involved in manufacturing them.

Now to deal with the cost issue, the company is currently seeking the help of Taiwanese partners. The names of these said partners were not revealed and neither any details when they will start manufacturing these new Cortana-based ‘connected cars’.

There was only a hint about the partners by Cathy Yeh, vice president of Microsoft Taiwan’s cloud and enterprise business group that many Taiwanese companies have started to develop internet-integrated cars.

The technology that the company is determined to bring out is really going to take things to a whole new level. The expected features will make things very much convenient for car drivers, but we never know how things can turn out. For instance if the windscreen feature hinders driving and causes accidents, which obviously cannot happen as the company will plan carefully and keep all these elements in mind.